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Title: American Falls by John Calvin Batchelor ISBN: 5-551-25612-X Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 1985 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Civil War fiction at its finest
Comment: Batchelor mixes fact and fiction to amazing effect in this unfairly forgotten novel of Civil War intrigue. The two protagonists -- one, a Northern-born Confederate intelligence officer ordered to burn down Manhattan; the other, a Union cavalry major assigned to Lafayette Baker's Secret Service -- circle one another in ever-tightening spirals as the 1864 election approaches with Lincoln's election -- and Union victory -- still quite doubtful.

There really was an almost-successful Confederate plot to burn down Manhattan, and so terrorize the North into voting not for Lincoln (and total war), but for Gen. George B. McClellan (who ran on the promise to sue for peace if elected). And after reading an obscure article in Civil War Times magazine, I learned that Batchelor's Confederate spymaster was a real person -- the man whose identity the rebel agents took to their graves. What Batchelor does with this raw material is construct an 1864 of holodeck-like reality, and immerse the reader in it to a greater depth and intensity than Shaara in Killer Angels or Frazier in Cold Mountain. His reconstruction of Washington, D.C., New-York, and the Niagara Falls of the title (whence the rebel terrorists entered the country from Canada) is detailed in the extreme.

Overlaid upon this framework is an intricately plotted story that includes hefty dollops of spycraft, intrigue, love and betrayal, loyalty and regret, and spot-on period dialogue.

Like Forsythe's assassination attempt in The Day of the Jackal, the historical outcome of the Confederate plan is predetermined -- but you'd never guess that from the page-turning narrative. You're in late 1864, things are desperate for both North and South, and it seems as though the plot is foolproof and the participants more real than yourself. If you can find and read this gem of historical/cultural/military/spy fiction, you'll never want it to end.