That Anvil of Our Souls (Civil War at Sea Series #3) » (~)

In the third volume of David Poyer's monumental Civil War at Sea cycle, North meets South in the momentous first battle between ironclads.

In Fire on the Waters America split in two and the characters in David Poyer's Civil War at Sea series had to choose sides. Then, in A Country of Our Own, Ker Claiborne took the war north, aboard the Confederacy's most formidable commerce raider.

Now, in That Anvil of Our Souls, David Poyer takes us into the turrets and casemates of the most historic sea engagement of the Civil War. In New York, Theo Hubbard is the engineer for a revolutionary new "fighting machine," the Monitor, and is eager to become a man of means . . . even if it compromises his integrity. In Norfolk, Catherine Claiborne faces her husband's impending hanging for piracy, their baby daughter's death, and the realities of occupation.

In Richmond, Lieutenant Lomax Minter must find a spy who threatens the South's ultimate weapon: a tremendous ironclad, rebuilt from a sunken wreck; aging Dr. Steele witnesses the horrors that are the aftermath of glory; and gun captain Hanks, escaped slave, struggles with the twin snakes of "freedom."

Publishers Weekly

The veteran of 25 sea novels, Poyer (Fire on the Waters) extends his Civil War at Sea saga with this third installment, which begins with Catherine Claiborne burying her infant daughter, while learning that her husband, Kyd Claiborne, faces hanging as a pirate. Enter Union naval engineer Theodorus Hubbard to work on the Monitor and fire-eater Lomax Minter to search for spies working on the rival Merrimack, with the climactic March 1862 battle of the two ironclads (off Hampton Roads, Va.) looming. Poyer mixes fictional characters with the likes of Monitor builder John Ericson and Commodore Franklin Buchanan (whose wounding in the first day's battle is described in grisly detail) to nice effect. Escaped slave Calpurnius Hanks sticks to his guns, literally, in spite of a shorthanded U.S. Navy that can't shake off racism and his ship, the Cumberland, sinking under him. A larger cast than Poyer's naval Dan Lenson novels makes for occasional choppiness, but otherwise this book is every bit as good; Poyer makes readers see and feel the blockade and the men who tried to maintain it. (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.