The Sands of Pride: A Novel of the Civil War - Hardcover

Trotter, William R.

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60 ratings by Goodreads

9780786710133: The Sands of Pride: A Novel of the Civil War

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786710136 ISBN 13: 9780786710133

Publisher: Carroll & Graff, 2002

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In this grandly ambitious masterpiece of Civil War fiction, noted novelist and historian William R. Trotter has created nothing less than an epic re-creation of the whole experience of the war—from secession to Gettysburg—within the microcosm of North Carolina, a theater of war never before brought to life in a major novel of the Civil War. Trotter's powerful story follows the intertwined fates of over two dozen major characters—real and fictional, Union and Confederate, combatants and civilians—swept up in the hurricane of war. In The Sands of Pride, he chronicles the exploits of bold blockade-runners like Southerner Matthew Sloane, intrepid naval warriors like Federal officer William Barker Cushings, sadistic bushwhackers like Cyrus Bone, and spies like the Confederacy's seductive Belle O'Neal. The novel's center of gravity is the beautiful coastal city of Wilmington, North Carolina, in the midst of a vibrant, bawdy "Golden Age". It was the South's most vital port and guarded by the largest, most formidable earthen fortress ever built in America, Fort Fisher, a stupendous feat of engineering and a symbol of Southern defiance. After every other significant Rebel port had been vanquished, Fort Fisher's guns kept open Wilmington's boisterous docks, which poured supplies from Europe that kept the Confederacy alive. The Sands of Pride tells a story both vast and intimate. Civil War buffs will be stunned by the stirring events depicted here. All readers will be fascinated by its colorful, passionate characters and swept along by its page-turning momentum.

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About the Author:

William R. Trotter, an authority on the Civil War, is the author of thirteen books, including the novel Winter Fire and the nonfiction trilogy The Civil War in North Carolina.

From Publishers Weekly:

By the author of the notable nonfiction trilogy The Civil War in North Carolina which Charles Frazier acknowledged as source material for Cold Mountain this all-encompassing roman ... clef unfolds as a quixotic, skirmish-by-skirmish account of the early battles of the Civil War along North Carolina's labyrinthine coast, stretching from Elizabeth City, south of Norfolk, Va., to Fort Caswell on the Atlantic banks, opposite Fort Fisher at the mouth of the Cape Fear River south of Wilmington. Opening on New Year's Eve 1860, almost six months before North Carolina's grudging decision to secede from the Union on May 20, 1861, this sprawling account revolves around the bustling seaport of Wilmington, which serves as the lifeline of the Confederacy. The future North Carolina governor, Zebulon Vance; the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis; the architect of Fort Fisher, Col. William Lamb; Lafayette Baker, deputy director of the fledgling Secret Service; Gen. Robert E. Lee; Gen. Ambrose Burnside; and the naval commander William Barker Cushing are some of the real-life historic figures that are artfully integrated with an extensive dramatis personae of flamboyant and idiosyncratic fictional characters including Belle O'Neal, a sensuous rebel spy; Cyrus Bone, a Confederate deserter; and Largo Landau, the daughter of a Wilmington merchant who becomes a patron of the poor. This masterful epic offers insight into the perfidious political agendas and personal greed underlying the bumbling and horrors suffered by both sides during the war. As it concludes in July 1863, portending the fall of Fort Fisher some two years later, a sequel seems likely.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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