Maggie Poinsett, a hard-nosed photographer, doesn't look or act like a "Sweet Magnolia"--the name her mother gave her at birth, nor does she believe in ghosts. But while on vacation with her parents at Golden Apple Farm, a bed-and-breakfast in the mountains of western North Carolina, she meets the ghost of Thomas MacKinlay, Civil War soldier shot for the crime of desertion. She's obsessed with saving Thomas and when the full moon opens a gate, she steps through it into the midst of our nation's most deadly hour--the American Civil War.