Darkhaired, willful Janet Todd is a courier and fervent Evangelist for the Sons of Liberty, a conspiracy to revolutionize Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and the other states of the American heartland to form a Northwest Confederacy -- and stop the war. Major Paul Stapleton, badly wounded at Antietam and Gettysburg, commands a troop of black cavalrymen who hunt Union deserters. Secretly disgusted with the war, Paul is torn between his love for Janet Todd and his West Point oath of loyalty to the Union.

Close by is Henry Gentry, boyhood friend of Major Stapleton. Having lost his arm and most of his self respect at the Battle of Shiloh, he is a clandestine intelligence officer, urging his old friend to betray Janet Todd and the Sons of Liberty. When This Cruel War Is Over portrays two generations of Americans struggling to make sense of a national catastrophe, to rescue love and personal happiness in the face of a future that is shot through with darkness and foreboding.