Those who enjoy Bruce Catton's and Shelby Foote's Civil War histories will find a fictional equal in Peters' retelling of the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign.Combining character study, strategy, and battle scenes, Peters focuses on the great, small, and those in history's shadows, like U.S. Gen. Emory Upton, "an enigma, a hardened Christian, mean as a Turk…a brilliant, intolerant merciless young man." Famous names also appear: Union Army Gen. Philip Sheridan, all pugnacious Irish temper; tobacco-chewing Confederate Gen. Jubal Early, "a spitting, crook-back man and harsh-mouthed as a heathen"; and future president Rutherford Hayes, who learned "War made it hard to credit a merciful God." A superlative novel. --Kirkus
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