In The Review Queue: The Damned of Petersburg

The Damned of Petersburg

By Ralph Peters

GLORY TURNED GRIM…

…and warfare changed forever. As Grant pinned Lee to Petersburg and Richmond, the Confederacy’s stubborn Army of Northern Virginia struggled against a relentless Union behemoth, with breathtaking valor and sacrifice on both sides. That confrontation in the bloody summer and autumn of 1864 shaped the nation that we know today.

From the butchery of The Crater, where stunning success collapsed into a massacre, through near-constant battles fought by heat-stricken soldiers, to the crucial election of 1864, The Damned of Petersburg resurrects our Civil War’s hard reality, as plumes and sabers gave way to miles of trenches.

Amid the slaughter of those fateful months, fabled leaders―Grant and Lee, Winfield Scott Hancock and A. P. Hill―turned to rising heroes, Confederates “Little Billy” Mahone and Wade Hampton, last of the cavaliers, or Union warriors such as tragedy-stricken Francis Channing Barlow and the fearless Nelson Miles, a general at twenty-four.

Nor does Ralph Peters forget the men in the ranks, the common soldiers who paid the price for the blunders of leaders who’d never know their names. In desperate battles, now forgotten, such as Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern and Reams Station, soldiers on both sides, pushed to the last human limits, fought on as their superiors struggled to master a terrible new age of warfare.

The Damned of Petersburg revives heroes aplenty―enriching our knowledge of our most terrible war ― but, above all, this novel’s a tribute to the endurance and courage of the American soldier, North or South.

About the Author

Ralph Peters is an award-winning, bestselling novelist; a retired U.S. Army officer and former enlisted man; the author of numerous works on strategy; and a popular media commentator. In uniform and as a researcher and journalist, he has covered numerous conflicts and trouble spots, from Africa to the Caucasus, from Iraq to Pakistan.

Renowned for accuracy and authenticity, his Civil War writing, under his own name and as Owen Parry, has won numerous prizes, including the American Library Association’s Boyd Award (twice), the Hammett Prize, the Herodotus Award, and the Meade Society’s Order of Merit. In 2015, he received the Andrew J. Goodpaster Prize as an outstanding American soldier-scholar.

He is currently at work on the next climactic novel of the sequence that began with Cain at Gettyburg and continued through Hell or Richmond, Valley of the Shadow and The Damned of Petersburg.

ISBN 978-0765374066, Forge Books, © 2016, Hardcover, 432 Pages, Maps. $27.99.  To Purchase the book click HERE.