The Life and Times of Jim Henry Shore takes readers back to North Carolina during the Civil War. Jim Henry must walk a path between his anti-war, anti-slavery Quaker community and the tensions the wider world of his times. He must leave his family and his sweetheart and go on a journey he never imagined. Before his travels come to an end, he has been a prisoner of war, has traveled by sea and rail and sea again from New York to California, where he hopes to make his fortune. He returns home by the newly completed Transcontinental Railroad, in hopes of marrying his beloved Julia.

Lawrence Davis's account of his great-grandfather's life and times reminds us that history is both big and small, both sweeping in scope and intensely personal. He brings to life the hero's troubled journey toward home, toward love, toward peace.