In How Few Remain, Harry Turtledove set the stage for his stunning
alternate history of World War I. Now, with The Great War: American
Front,
he carries this towering epic into the early twentieth century in a bold
re-imagining of the fateful war that hurtled humanity into the modern
age.
Envision a divided America--one camp led by Theodore Roosevelt, the other
by Woodrow Wilson--in the most explosive conflict humankind has seen,
where
global war is waged with sophisticated weaponry on American soil for the
first time in history.
When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the
Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered
the
fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong
Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their allies, Britain
and
France. But it soon became clear to both sides that this fight would be
different--that war itself would never be the same again. For this was to
be a protracted, global conflict waged with new and chillingly efficient
innovations--the machine gun, the airplane, poison gas, and trench warfare.
In the Americas, the fighting spread like wildfire on multiple and
far-flung fronts. The U.S. Army invaded the South, striking in Virginia,
Kentucky, and the West and assaulted Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. As
President Theodore Roosevelt rallied the diverse ethnic groups of the
northern states--Irish and Italians, Mormons and Jews--Confederate
President Woodrow Wilson struggled to hold together a Confederacy still
beset by ignorance, prejudice, and class divisions. And as the war raged
on, southern blacks, oppressed for generations, are fatefully drawn into a
climactic confrontation.
In The Great War: American Front, Harry Turtledove creates a vast,
vibrant
canvas that blends actual events and players with a history as it might
have been. This unforgettable, deeply moving, and superbly original novel
is a triumph of the creative imagination.
