This seventh and final book in the novel series carries the reader from the struggle of Dodie with the fetch of Irish folklore to the reuniting of characters in Natchez and Memphis and from the regathering and depositing of the seven red stones at Bobb House in Vicksburg to a manifestation of Solomon’s past encounters with Takouhi. Revelations of repressed memories of C. C. for Xenophanes rise to the forefront of his consciousness. Zethro and his family receive blessings and encounter troubles. Solomon and Egiap settle in a replica of an Irish cottage in Egypt, Mississippi. Sawyer Dundee and Solomon Witcher, realizing the existence of a conspiracy by some former Union officers concerning Confederate treasury wagons at the capture of Jefferson Davis, seek the lost Confederate gold themselves and initiate plans to thwart the scheme of the Yankees.

Stelcie Dundee and Zethro discover a hidden message from Abdoulaye and then travel to Rodney, Mississippi. Egiap teams up in Marksville, Louisiana, with Lachney and Tee Thevenote to search for a cemetery and then explore the site of Fort DeRussy. Sawyer Dundee continues to travel toward Natchez, and Solomon Witcher meets Xenophanes in New Orleans. Solomon revisits the establishment with the private poker game nightly and meets someone from his past that stokes his interest in lost Confederate gold. Xeno visits the tombs of his parents and that of a special someone from his past. Fate now draws several of the characters to Vicksburg to the challenge of helping Dodie confront a fetch, a supernatural entity of Irish folklore, she first saw at Bobb House. Sawyer in Natchez contemplates the possibility of finding lost Confederate gold to finance his future.

Interlopers terrorize Stelcie and Zethro. Egiap travels to Memphis where she meets Beulah in a contraband camp. Sawyer Dundee and Solomon Witcher, both in the Confederate escape expedition from Richmond, part as Sawyer continues with the Davis column and Solomon takes command of a single treasury wagon headed in a different direction toward the Gulf Coast. Dr. A. O.’s Traveling Show, moving through Georgia, continues to see destruction. At one campsite for the traveling show, they find an almost-dead Sawyer. Solomon’s crew and wagon are attacked during stormy weather by renegades. Solomon is saved by Red Cloud Woman. Egiap feels the need to return to Avoyelles Parish. Abdoulaye visits the Dundee homestead and tells more about his crossing of the Sahara as a captive of slavers. Xenophanes, in New Orleans with a theatrical company, revisits the oddities shop and the Girod Street Cemetery. Solomon attempts to meet Xenophanes.

Union occupation of Natchez included the contraband camp called The Corral near the Devil’s Punch Bowl. Near Richmond, Sawyer as a member of Mosby’s Rangers participates in military raids. Sawyer regains his memory. Solomon travels to Vermont for the Confederate raid to rob banks. Egiap is transferred to Fort Delaware Prison. Solomon now at the CSA Treasury Department in Richmond is invited to a Christmas “starvation party.” In Natchez, Stelcie learns that Beulah is not at The Corral. Zethro in a labor gang works in Grand Gulf and Vicksburg. He escapes. Before Zethro leaves Vicksburg, he has supernatural experiences at Bobb House. Zethro travels with Abdoulaye, who relates his story of surviving the trans-Sahara slave trade. Sawyer becomes a personal bodyguard to Jefferson Davis in Richmond where he sees the Dr. Andekian Onesiphoros Traveling Show. Sawyer and Solomon meet in Richmond before the Confederate government is forced to evacuate Richmond.

Solomon Witcher is thought to be a traitor to the Confederate cause and a spy for the Yankees. The Surgets give a dinner banquet for Union civilian officials and military officers. Solomon travels to Vicksburg to facilitate a prisoner exchange for Sawyer Dundee. The Surgets are notified that Clifton will be the primary site for Federal defenses and will be destroyed. Solomon and Sawyer return to Natchez. Sawyer reveals that Solomon is not a traitor but a spy for the Confederate Secret Service. The two young cousins return to the war. Egiap, Zethro, and TaSondryana travel to the Dundee homestead and are arrested there by the Yankees. Solomon is sent on a mission to infiltrate the Loyal Order of Heroes of America, the Red Stringers. Sawyer awakens with only selective memory after a train crash and falls in with Mosby’s partisans. Egiap is sent to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D. C. Solomon returns to his role of CSA spy.

Returning to Natchez with money, Solomon Witcher reunites with family and friends. The Dundee family and Solomon disagree over treatment of slaves. Solomon informs Sawyer of his premonitions of the upcoming war and of a visit with Miriam at Clifton when she calls him a traitor. War erupts, and Sawyer and Solomon volunteer to serve the Confederacy and go their separate ways. As the war progresses, the two cousins meet by chance during the siege of Vicksburg when Solomon crosses the siege lines between the two armies. Sawyer and Solomon talk with soldiers from Avoyelles Parish (LA), hear wounded soldiers discuss a female redheaded healer at Windsor Plantation, and endure the Union bombardment and share the hardships of the siege. Back in Union territory Solomon finds Zethro in a stockade. Zethro tells Solomon about what happened at Windsor Plantation as they search for Egiap, who has left an enigmatic missive. Vicksburg surrenders, and Sawyer is a prisoner-of-war.

In antebellum Natchez, Mississippi, cousins Sawyer Dundee and Solomon Witcher come into manhood. Both cousins attend a party at Clifton, a mansion owned by the Surgets. Sawyer remains in Natchez to run the family sawmill. Solomon, realizing his personal luck, charm, and persuasiveness, strikes out on his own to seek legendary buried treasure of Natchez Trace outlaws and Natchez Indians. He journeys to Louisiana to the Troyville Indian Mounds and the French settlements south of the Red River in Avoyelles Parish. He finds success near Marksville, where he hears of a redheaded female healer who had visited the area. In New Orleans to invest in the slave trade and play poker, Solomon encounters the redheaded “Egypt” and her followers. Solomon, after learning of the red string legend, gris-gris bags, and a street preacher named Xenophanes, joins Egypt in a plot of vengeance that ends with voodoo justice imposed upon a New Orleans businessman in the Girod Street Cemetery.

Wanting was never the sin, but forgetting who I was would’ve been.

Lydia was raised and spent her years trying to be good, to be the girl her parents expected her to be. The Guilt of Wanting follows Lydia from her college days to married life as she learns what it means to live for her own pleasure and not for the expectation of others. Facing her guilt, she learns what it truly means to choose herself by giving in to her desires.