World Enough and Time — Nancy Madison

In late 1865 Tom Mahon and his friend, disinherited Virginian Randolph Carlisle, finally reach Galveston after traveling cross-country from a Union prison in Maryland. Good-natured, trusting Tom is no match for the clever, unscrupulous cardsharp, Randolph, to whom winning is everything. Meeting Tom's dark-eyed sweetheart, Mattie Ratliff, Randolph decides to steal her from Tom. He has Tom framed for a crime he didn't commit, then sails off to homestead in Brazil, as many Confederate veterans did, along with Mattie and her family, leaving Tom in a Galveston jail.