Framed for a murder he didn't commit, Zebadiah finds himself in a New Orleans prison cell next to Willie Dan, a cold-blooded killer, who insists they escape together. As Zeb refuses and is sent upriver to the swamps on a chain gang to build a road for the Hydras plantation, he is thrust into a conspiracy of confederates, whose efforts to build a golden circle of slave states from Texas, Louisiana and Georgia to Cuba are just beginning to take hold...