Jacob's Baptism

A tale of love, loyalty, war, commitment, death, and redemption, of growing up at a moment's notice, of discovering what's truly meaningful. Seventeen-year-old Jacob Hoffman, son of a Dunker pacifist, has a winsome and manipulative fifteen-year-old girlfriend, Rachael, who wants to marry him, or so she thinks. But Jacob's heart is set on a rifle, a sparkling Springfield rifled musket, and he's determined to get one - even if it kills him. Taking a treasured heirloom, a five-dollar gold coin given him by his dying Grandpa, he sets out to 'buy an adventure' -- a rifle. On the eve of the deadliest single day in American history, Jacob and his daddy's slave wagon-maker, Bigun, skip town in the wake of their inadvertent involvement in the killing of three nefarious drifters, and find themselves thrust into the midst of the Rebel line of battle, smack in the apex of a sunken road, Hog Trough Road, now just minutes away from receiving the full wrath of French's and Richardson's divisions of bluecoats.