In 1865, he is seventeen and a traitor, broke and ashamed when he flees reconstruction to start a new life in Texas, but as he struggles to survive amid thieves and unscrupulous lawmen, he discovers his father's dark secret and must return to confront the man he adored.

SYNOPSIS:

Shadow Soldier is a pilot written off of the novel of the same name. It is a series or limited series comparable to Hell on Wheels, especially in terms of target audience, but also in feel.

The pilot opens: Jefferson Doddridge Wilkes, the son of a close friend of Jefferson Davis, is a young man, fifteen when the pilot opens, shooting down from the hills towering over the Mississippi River from the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, with friends. As the war progresses and the siege of Vicksburg begins to succeed, J.D. is driven off with his father while his friends remain behind to ultimately join the Confederate forces. J.D. wants to join the Army, but his father introduces him to the role of a courier instead, a spy, in some sense to keep him close.

End of Pilot

The Bible: At the end of the war, when they return to the palatial estate it has been wrecked by the Northern troops, who used it as a command center. It is soon made clear that J.D. has no future in the unreconstructed South as the Northern officials consider him a traitor and his friends consider him a coward for not joining them in the Army. His father, Horatio Wilkes, forces him into the frontier to more forgiving environs.

When J.D. gets to Marshall, Texas he is unable to get a better job and leaps at the opportunity to work as a cowboy, unwittingly working with a gang of cattle thieves. In order to prove himself as an unwitting participant he is pressed into service to help take them into custody and is injured during the shootout.

Mystery surrounds J.D., who, as he heals, refuses to give his real name for fear of bringing shame to his well-known father as his role in the cattle theft is undetermined. He is then pressed into service by the sheriff to retrieve a bandit leader to pay off the debt for his medical care. They have no trouble bringing the leader back, but discover that the bandit gang has occupied the town since they left.

J.D. encounters several such situations as he searches for an occupation that suits him. He is occasionally confronted with hostility for being a Confederate. Through it all, he struggles to maintain the Christian faith that was easy in the South, but is much harder to believe in as he performs the deeds necessary for his survival.

J.D. gradually develops the skills needed to take on a much more important role that becomes necessary when his respected father is exposed for exchanging information on the spy ring he created for favorable treatment by the Union.

Former associates of Horatio Wilkes, now on his hit list, enlist J.D. to use what he has learned in the West to return and deal with his father, because J.D. is the only one who can get close enough to do it. He can save his father and return to a life of ease without conscience or remorse or he can kill his father and restore the decency and honor of his name.