When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable.  She instructs her only child to retrieve his father from the battlefield and bring him home.  At fourteen, Robey is ill-prepared for such a journey, but with a sense of adventure he sets off wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety: blue on one side, gray on the other.  However, it is the gift of an uncommon horse that changes Robey's destiny --- a coal black horse that becomes his only companion, guide, and protector.

As they plunge into a landscape of death and destruction, Robey, cloaked in the invincibility of youth, ventures dangerously close to battle and witnesses acts of terrible violence and inhumanity.  And slowly the horrors of war, the truth of his own nature, and the inextricable connection between the two turn the boy into a warrior as brave and as mighty as the coal black horse.

In the tradition of The Red Badge of Courage, Olmstead has created a brutally honest portrait of what war does to man and how it allows men --- even impels them --- to love what they should hate.