The Fires of Pride — William R. Trotter

As William R. Trotter once more takes up the stunning array of characters -- Union and Confederate, fictional and historical, combatant and civilian -- that he introduced in the inaugural novel of his epic series, The Sands of Pride, it is now the closing days of July 1863. Robert E. Lee's army has been repulsed at Gettysburg, the tide of history has shifted, and the fortunes of the Rebel side have begun, inexorably, to decline. Featuring the brief but glorious career of the mighty ironclad ram, the CSS Hatteras, which emerges from the hollows and backwaters of North Carolina to challenge the might of the Union navy, The Fires of Pride is a richly textured, sweepingly dramatic epic, a towering work that combines deep scholarship with an intensely human understanding of the men and women of the period.