"American Falls is a remarkable achievement. The powerful narrative, vivid language, and author's complete mastery of a huge canvas together bring the American Civil War to life with the immediacy of a freshly discovered newsreel."
- J.G. Ballard
Powerful, many-faceted, and astonishingly illuminating. John Calvin Batchelors's novel evokes the ideas, the passions, and the divided loyalties that make the Civil War the central tragedy in American History.
As the novel opens, it is election eve in the fall of 1864. Lincoln's reelection is in serious doubt. The war is at a military stalemate. New York and Washington are rife with war profiteers, anarchists, and European spies. In Atlanta, General Sherman and his army await orders to attack the underbelly of the starving South. And, most dangerous of all, the Confederate Secret Service, based in Canada, has dispatched cadres of saboteurs to launch a coordinated raid against the North's great cities on election day.
The fatalistic clash of two men, agents of the rival secret services, is at the core of this rich, compelling story based on the actual events of the last year of the war. The wealthy John Oliphant, originally from the North, has fallen in love with and married into the South. He is the most veteran of Confederate secret agents, and yet he remains unable to choose between his service to the Confederacy, his love for America, and his adoration of a woman who is not his wife.
Oliphant's adversary is Amaziah Butter of Bangor, Maine, a Union cavalry captain on temporary assingment to the United States Secret Service. Butter is intuitive, naive, and relentless in pursuit of the man he comes to believe is the most dangerous in America.
Oliphant and Butter are sentimental enemies in a merciless war. As they struggle, err, and deceive as they are deceived, they recognize in their bond what Oliphant calls "our common wilderness" - that they are united by their love of a country being destroyed, by their unexamined infidelities, and by their desire to press on to the finish with what they ultimately realize must be done.
John Calvin Batchelor is the author of seven novels, the most recent of which is Father's Day. He lives in New York City with his wife, son, and daughter
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