After their infamous 'March to the Sea', General William Tecumseh Sherman and his 62,000 man army occupied Savannah during December 1864 - January 1865. Sherman took as his army headquarters the mansion of Englishman Charles Green on Madison Square. Against this historical backdrop the novel introduces a young war widow, Belle Anderson, who becomes the general's willing mistress. She discovers true sexual freedom and something else -- a bordello operator who stalks her at night and threatens to expose the affair. "Sherman's Mistress" interweaves the fictional story with many historical characters of the period, including Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Savannah Mayor Richard Arnold, diarist Fanny Yates Cohen, blockade runner Gazaway Lamar, Major Henry Hitchcock, and Union Generals John Geary and Jefferson C. Davis.