This text is the result of the author's research into two young boys who joined the Iowa army. There probably were not a pair of more ordinary Union soldiers than the Iowa farm boys Andrew Jackson Brayman and Edward Barney Brayman. Neither left any kind of written record of their service, but they had the good luck of having a sister whose grandson (veteran reporter Orr Kelly) and granddaughter-in-law (genealogist Mary Davies Kelly) would take an interest in their story one and a quarter centuries later.

This carefully researched book makes use of regimental histories and other material to crack the mystery of where these two boys fought and how they died: one on an obscure Arkansas battlefield called Marks' Mill and the other in a military hospital. Along the way, the Kellys describe how typical soldiers lived and died.

This is not a book of presidents and generals, but of men who fought and died and were largely forgotten. The ghosts of both Brayman boys rise from their patriot graves and come to life on these pages. Many Civil War histories pay little attention to the enormous sacrifices individuals and their families made during the War Between the States; Dream's End rightly places them front and center.