American Falls A Novel

American Falls opens on 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 assignment to the United States Secret Service. Butter is intuitive, na