For twenty-four year old graduate assistant Cole Holbrook, history is the ultimate adventure. His single-parent, Smithsonian security guard dad is to blame. Having a childhood with overnight museum babysitters like Abraham Lincoln and Attila the Hun, Cole plans to make a career out of researching all the history he encountered on those exploratory nights. Life was proceeding as planned. A month after becoming a history graduate assistant, Cole is given the opportunity of a lifetime. Two weeks later, Cole finds himself protecting his dad from a gunman at one moment, but standing knee-deep in a civil war battle the next. With only modern clothes and his wits, Cole curses his ambition, the secret society he's in bed with and the Triskel Compass that sent him to 1864. In the midst of the bloody Battle of Franklin, Cole meets Sally McGavock, who is immune to charm and fresh out of sterilized bandages. Cole's adventure keeps heading south when he realizes the legendary Triskel Compass has another surprise for him. Someone wants it back. In a war that is anything but civil, Cole must wage a personal battle to secure the Compass and return to the twenty-first century. Trying to keep a stubborn Sally safe while Cole plays hide-n-seek with a psychopath-who will do anything for its power-means trusting a quirky group of confederate soldiers with surprises of their own. Will it be enough or will the past defeat him and cost Cole the future forever? Only time will tell . . .