In the Valley of the Shadow, they wrote their names in blood.
From a daring Confederate raid
that nearly seized Washington, D.C., to a stunning reversal on the
bloody fields of Cedar Creek, the summer and autumn of 1864 witnessed
some of the fiercest fighting of our Civil War--in mighty battles now
all but forgotten.
The desperate struggle for
mastery of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, breadbasket of the Confederacy
and the South's key invasion route into the North, pitted a remarkable
cast of heroes in blue and gray against each other: runty, rough-hewn
Phillip Sheridan, a Union general with an uncanny gift for inspiring
soldiers, and Jubal Early, his Confederate counterpart, stubborn,
raw-mouthed and deadly; the dashing Yankee boy-general, George Armstrong
Custer, and the brilliant, courageous John Brown Gordon, a charismatic
Georgian who lived one of the era's greatest love stories.
From hungry, hard-bitten Rebel
privates to a pair of Union officers destined to become presidents, from
a neglected hero who saved our nation's capital and went on to write
one of his century's greatest novels, to doomed Confederate leaders of
incomparable valor, Ralph Peters brings to life yesteryear's giants and
their breathtaking battles with the same authenticity, skill and insight
he offered readers in his prize-winning Civil War bestsellers, Cain at Gettysburg and Hell or Richmond.
Sharp as a bayonet and piercing as a bullet, Valley of the Shadow is a great novel of our grandest, most-tragic war.