The Portal

On a quiet cul-d-sac in downtown Brooklyn, stands an abandoned, dilapidated Victorian home. Purchased and renovated by a college history professor, it is, unbeknownst to him, a portal to the past. A strange noise, signaling a visit from a young woman posing as the wife of the home's original 1850's builder, begins the professor's interaction with the past and the prospect of changing the history of the United States.

The young woman is from a well-to-do Creole family in New Orleans. On the cusp of the American Civil War, she meets and becomes friends with a mysterious woman while at a church social. The woman has traveled to the future, and invites her to do the same. The young woman meets the professor, who introduces her to the modern world. He is a Civil War historian, and the young woman learns its history and eventual outcome.

The young woman's father is an ardent secessionist, and learns, quite by accident, that she knows the war's outcome, and the various Confederate missteps that proved fatal to the Southern cause. He brings that information to fellow Creole and celebrated Confederate General Beauregard. The general is at first quite skeptical, but becomes intrigued, and a plan is put in place to obtain enough information to bring to the Confederate president.

The past and the present collide, with the future history of the United States at stake.