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kanejim57's review
5.0
A wonderful and intense book with a very personal and human plot line woven through the story against the back drop of the growing tension within the United States from the late 1830's to the full blown Civil War in the 1860's.
Mayer does a wonderful job of recreating a diverse cast of historical figures, such as US Grant, John Fremont, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Abraham Lincoln alongside a cast of unforgettable fictional characters such as Sally Skull who trades, illegally and legally, with any and all takers; St. George Dyer the plantation hand whose villainous ways leave a wake of destruction; and the Rumble men who fight for both the blue and grey.
Within the space of 20 years Mayer takes the reader from Atlantic to Pacific and back as the American West is starting to be settled; across the plains and mountains of Mexico during the Mexican War; from the hot battle of Shiloh to the historic battle between the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor. The result is a fine book that provides a very human view of the personalities and challenges that were part of that era of American history.
Mayer does a wonderful job of recreating a diverse cast of historical figures, such as US Grant, John Fremont, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Abraham Lincoln alongside a cast of unforgettable fictional characters such as Sally Skull who trades, illegally and legally, with any and all takers; St. George Dyer the plantation hand whose villainous ways leave a wake of destruction; and the Rumble men who fight for both the blue and grey.
Within the space of 20 years Mayer takes the reader from Atlantic to Pacific and back as the American West is starting to be settled; across the plains and mountains of Mexico during the Mexican War; from the hot battle of Shiloh to the historic battle between the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor. The result is a fine book that provides a very human view of the personalities and challenges that were part of that era of American history.
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