The Cloud and the Fire is a revolutionary work. Political, social, timely, and most importantly"human. As a book, it is a riveting epic, and not only because of the scope of the story, but because of the ideas and characters who inhabit the story. Set during the Civil War in California, the book features an actual conspiracy where a clandestine group known as the Knights of the Golden Circle, who were the forerunners of the Ku Klux Klan, attempted to turn California into an apartheid state, separate from the Union. California, at the time, was wealthier than the Union and a place of unrivalled possibility and unmatched hatreds.