Lawyer Joseph Radcliffe and his black American comrade Benjamin Pierce were 'Buffalo Soldiers' in the Civil War and the Indian Wars - now Radcliffe defends the toughest cases in a troubled city. But in South Africa a war rages between the British and the Boers and, after an argument, his son Edward runs away to join the Irish forces there. When Edward is captured and held as a spy, Radcliffe and Pierce - a black man in a white man's war - set off to find him and bring him home.