At the height of the brutal U.S. civil war between the North and the South, a Confederate soldier named Inman—badly wounded in battles near Petersburg—decides to go home through the Blue Ridge Mountains to the north, where his beloved Ada is waiting. While Inman crosses the devastated southern lands, facing slaves, marauders, and bounty hunters and barely avoiding death, Ada tries to restore the abandoned farm of her late father and adapt to life in a changed world.