THE SANDS OF PRIDE

Monumental, bombs-bursting-in-air epic of nearly 50 characters who fight, steal, seduce, scheme, and have the time of their lives in and around Civil War–era North Carolina.

Indeed, you’d think that state was the epicenter of the conflict in this massive fiction whose tangled plot spans only the years 1861–63. But that’s no surprise, given that in his three-volume history, The Civil War in North Carolina, Trotter argued persuasively that the coastal state played a pivotal role in the war. His experience as a novelist (Winter Fire, 1993, etc.) is also evident here, from the cliffhanger opening all the way through Confederate Colonel William Lamb’s plot-teasing final monologue (“He would learn on that day the true strength of what he had created upon these windswept sands and meet the destiny that would be the measure of his life”). The characters, most of them based on actual people, have a regrettable tendency to lapse into history-speak (“The South has an agrarian economy, so every man they put in the field reduces the wealth of that economy”; “As a defense against the full might of the Federal navy, which may appear on that horizon at any moment, these batteries amount to nothing!”), but they are otherwise delightful. We meet sexy female spies, valiant African-American fighters, winsome privateers, sneaky bushwhackers, and a host of scalawags at all levels of command in Richmond and Washington. What drives them into the breach isn’t so much an attempt to settle the issues of slavery and secession as it is pride of country, class, blood, and racial origin. Trotter’s battle scenes, especially those featuring the amazing (and historically accurate) exploits of Union Naval Commander William Cushing and hashish-puffing British blockade runner Augustus Hobart-Hampden, show armed conflict as a gruesome challenge that more often than not brings out the best in those lucky enough to survive.

A success both as guts-and-glory melodrama and as a collection of eye-opening true stories from the Civil War.