Mark Simmons leads us on a sometimes strange, often amusing odyssey across the Southern States of America, a journey of some 5000 miles, looking for the echoes of the Civil War, the event more than any other that shaped the nation. It is a search for the echoes of that war in all sorts of places, as if "A Crack in Time" might propel him into another world. The journey is teaming with characters, some contemporary, some historical, others fictional, all with their story to tell, their point to put. The landscape still has the power to haunt with the shattering events branded into its soil. And there are occasions when the echoes seem strong, not mere ghost stories, something stronger than that, the past physically affecting the senses as if the past were speaking to another generation. The journey starts in Atlanta.