After Swan Samson’s oldest brother, Isaac, is murdered, Swan, a twenty-year-old Georgian, goes to war to find his brother’s killer and exact the revenge required by his notions of duty and honor. Swan’s War is the story of Swan’s internal struggle, in which the suffering of war and the slavery of revenge transform him completely. Swan easily convinces his two younger brothers to go to war with him. However, his twin brother, Jacob, is not as easily swayed. Jacob is in love with a slave girl and has no interest in fighting for the Confederacy. He also disdains Swan’s judgments about duty and honor.

Nevertheless, Swan persuades his twin brother to join the war and search for Isaac’s murderer by appealing to Jacob’s close relationship with their slain brother. Jacob will search for Isaac’s killer, while Swan seeks glory and revenge to repair his sullied reputation, which was compromised when he accidentally killed his best friend at the age of thirteen. During the war, Swan watches his younger brothers die, loses his fiancée, suffers grievous wounds, endures a year in a POW camp, and pursues, fights, and kills the man he thought had murdered his brother – only to find out that the real killer is someone he had known his whole life.

While Swan’s War is set during the Civil War and written by a historian, it is not really about that conflict. Rather, it is a character-driven story of the protagonist’s war within himself. The story includes strong female and enslaved characters, as well as family disputes. The protagonist and several of the main characters are based on the author’s ancestors.