Windmill Point (Stempel)

Windmill Point 
Jim Stempel, 2016
Penmore Press
419 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781942756507


Summary
The American Civil War simply explodes to life in this stunning new novel by Civil War expert and novelist, Jim Stempel.

As best-selling author, Mark Waldman (Words Can Change Your Brain) writes: "Jim Stempel’s Windmill Point captures the dreadful fury and desperate humanity of the American Civil War with a power and immediacy few authors have been able to achieve."

Set in the late spring of 1864, Windmill Point is a gripping account that vividly brings to life two desperate weeks during the spring of 1864, when the resolution of the Civil War was balanced on a razor’s edge.

At the time, both North and South had legitimate reasons to conclude they were near victory.  Ulysses S. Grant firmly believed that Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was only one great assault away from implosion, while Lee knew that the political will in the North to prosecute the war was on the verge of collapse.

Jim Stempel masterfully sets the stage for one of the most critical periods of the Civil War, contrasting the conversations of decision-making generals with chilling accounts of how ordinary soldiers of both armies fared in the mud, the thunder and the bloody fighting on the field of battle.  The result is a stunning achievement.

As American author John Danielski writes, "Brutal yet sentimental, grandly sweeping yet highly intimate, this is a splendid book for those who truly wish to understand the great and terrible spectacle that was the American Civil War," while radio host and critic, Dr. Wesley Britton, writing for Book Pleasures states simply that "I can easily say that Windmill Point is now my favorite novel dealing with the War Between the States." (From the publisher.)