Sweetsmoke is the story of Cassius Howard, a secretly literate slave, and his desire to find justice for his murdered friend, Emoline Justice. Emoline was a free black woman who served as surrogate mother and mentor to Cassius while he was recovering from a severe beating. Using his cunning and the limited freedoms granted to him as a favored slave, Cassius is able to gather clues to the identity of Emoline’s murderer. These clues take him from his plantation, Sweetsmoke, to the campgrounds of Confederate and Union soldiers to the middle of a battlefield during the Civil War. Along the way, Cassius meets a host of characters who alternately move…