A Dark and Bloody Ground: Reaping the Whirlwind

THE SAGA CONINUES...Perryville, Kentucky, October 8, 1862. The small town of just under 400 residents has the notable distinction of unwittingly hosting the largest battle ever fought in the State of Kentucky. From before sunrise until well after dark 70,000 soldiers waged war, smashed homes, dismantled fences, trampled crops, shattering the trees and killing one another wholesale. The struggle was, according to one Southern general who was there, "...the severest and most desperately contested engagement to my knowledge." The reader witnesses this historic carnage through the eyes of eleven different protagonists, both Northern and Southern, both infamous and common. From Brigadier General Phil Sheridan to Private George Kilpatrick and from Brigadier General Pat Cleburne to Private Sam Watkins, the Battle of Perryville is revealed and revered in this strikingly particular fictional narrative.