His name conjures images of the Wild West, of gunfights and gambling halls and a legendary friendship with the lawman Wyatt Earp. But before Doc Holliday was a Western legend he was a Southern son, born in the last days before the American Civil War and raised to be a Southern gentleman. Born in the last days of the Civil War with family ties to the author of Gone With the Wind, his story sweeps from the cotton plantations of Georgia to the cattle country and silver boomtowns of the American West.

The story begins with Southern Son, set during the turbulent times of the American Civil War, as young John Henry Holliday welcomes home his heroic father and learns a terrible secret about his beloved mother. After the Confederacy falls, John Henry becomes a troubled teenager and joins in with a gang of vigilantes trying to chase the Reconstruction Yankees out of their small Georgia town.