by Bruce Catton
First published 1985
Ulysses Grant sits in his father's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois, watching customers come and go while his military academy training gathers dust. The former captain who served in Mexico now struggles to sell harnesses and boots. When Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, Grant sees his chance to escape a life of quiet failure. He volunteers for the Union Army, expecting a desk job in Springfield. Instead, he finds himself commanding untested regiments in Missouri and Tennessee. Grant must learn to lead men who doubt his abilities while facing Confederate generals who graduated ahead of him at West Point. His early victories at Fort Donelson and Shiloh come at terrible cost. Soldiers die under his command while newspapers question his competence. Grant pushes forward anyway, knowing that each battle brings him closer to the commander he was meant to become. The story follows his transformation from a man haunted by peacetime failures into the general who will save the Union.
Genres: biography, american-civil-war, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, military-fiction, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, transformation
Setting: Galena, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Union Army, West Point
Period: Civil War, Peacetime
Hardcover · Amereon Ltd.