This story started at the beginning of 1865. Four characters from the South named John Robertson, Cornelia McDonald, Samuel Agnew, and Louis Hughes did not know what lay in store for them. They witnessed and took part in the Civil War, which was about to cease. They came from different Southern states. John Robertson was a Confederate soldier in Tennessee. Samuel Agnew was a son of a prosperous plantation owner in Mississippi. Cornelia McDonald was married to a Confederate military man Mississippi. They had seven children. Louis Hughes was a slave in Deep South. While the four characters were passing through the Confederate army’s defeat, they had different feelings ranging from desperation to aspiration and from anxiety to calmness. The book “A Year in the South: Four Lives in 1865” by Stephen V. Ash consists of four narrations devoted to each character’s fate throughout the year of 1865. The book enables the reader to follow each character’s life flow with events that bring about difficulties and gift chances. The writer employs the altering pattern of seasons and names the parts of the book “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Fall and Winter Again.” Apart from the life stories, these four narrations show how the Confederacy ceases to exist. The reader can observe how the characters’ fates changed as “they stepped across the threshold between the old world and the new” (Ash 14). Each part of the book is gripping in its way. Louis Hughes was a butler. However, during the Civil War, he served as an employed slave for the state Salt Commissioner Benjamin Woolsey and was involved in the salt works. His wife Matilda was a cook. Woolsey treated them well. This resulted in the fact that Woolsey was willing to help the family put the best foot forward. Therefore, under his patronage, Hughes had a possibility of selling tobacco plugs. Thus, he earned some money and could be considered a prosperous slave, among others in his community. However, the defeat of the Confederacy ceased the “happy interlude” (Ash 28). Together with his wife, Hughes was brought to the furthest areas of the state of Mississippi, where they found themselves in slavery once the war ended. The Federal army happened to have failed to come and announce the Emancipation Proclamation. Hughes’s patron was unwilling to free him. Despite this, Hughes was lucky enough to run away to Memphis and come back with two officials to help other slaves become free according to the law. Next, Hughes and his wife went to Cincinnati to look for Matilda’s mother, who had managed to run away to that place ten years before. After the family’s reunion, Hughes directed their steps towards Canada even though the majority of people who used to be slaves were coming back to the US from there. Hughes did not believe that his country was able and willing to defend his status as a free person: he was scared to find himself in slavery again. However, after a while, his family returned to the US. Taken into account the above-said, it is important to note two facts. First, patrons in the South were highly unwilling to set slaves free and let them go. Second, slaves tended to run away to the North and West. Besides, it is nec