During the bloody American Civil War, the stark reality of death leads one young man on a course of revenge that takes him from his quiet farm in north Alabama to the horrific battlefields of Virginia and Pennsylvania. On Christmas Eve 1862, David Summers hears the dreaded news: his father has perished at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Reeling with grief and thoughts of vengeance, David enlists and sets off for Richmond to join the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. But once in the cavalry, his life changes drastically, and his dream of glamorous chivalry becomes nothing but a cold, cruel existence of pain and suffering. He is hurled into one battle after another, and his desire for revenge wanes when he experiences first-hand the catastrophes of war. A haunting look at the human side of one of America's most tragic conflicts, A Beckoning Hellfire speaks to the delusion of war's idealism.