Elswyth Thane is best known for her Williamsburg series, seven novels published between 1943 and 1957 that follow several generations of two families from the American Revolution to World War II. Yankee Stranger is the second novel in the series.

Williamsburg, Virginia, is once more the scene, but the time is now the 1860s. Some of the characters are the descendants of those in the first novel of the series, Dawn's Early Light, and Grandmother Day, who was sixteen when Cornallis surrendered at Yorktown, is now ninety-five. Once, she can remember, it was Massachusetts that was threatening to secede instead of South Carolina. And when she was a girl they never seemed to think much about Yankees, one way or the other.

Therefore, when a Yankee comes to Williamsburg in the tense autumn of 1860 and red-haired Eden Day falls heels over head in love with him, her great-grandmother takes the long view—besides, she likes him herself.

The story moves from Williamsburg to Richmond to Washington and back again during the dreadful years between Fort Sumter and Appomattox. In addition to the fictitious characters, Jeb Stuart and General Lee, Pickett, Magruder, and Stonewall Jackson are all seen through the eyes of the men who followed them into battle.

Like Dawn's Early Light, Yankee Stranger is full of action and romance, but most importantly, it presents a vivid re-creation of a vanished world.