A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril: An Alternate History

"When it comes to history, everyone loves to ask, 'What if?' No one does this better than Peter Tsouras, who explores one of the biggest 'what ifs' of the American Civil War, namely what would have happened had Great Britain and France decided to take up arms against the Union in 1863? The result is a gripping narrative of battles from Maine to Louisiana, with even Washington under attack. New weapons and staunch presidential leadership might well hold the key to ultimate victory. To say more would spoil the story of familiar names in new places in a plot full of surprises that will hold the reader spellbound."-Brooks D. Simpson, ASU Foundation Professor of History, Arizona State University, and author of America's Civil War

"The second volume of this trilogy brings the newly expanded war to the United States. Tsouras understands the dynamics of mid-nineteenthcentury armed forces. He presents a convincing strategic situation. He describes battles so vividly one can smell the gunpowder. He keeps historical exposition, situation-changing technologies, and fictional characters to a minimum. And he shifts scenes with a smooth mastery that sustains suspense and keeps the pages turning. A Rainbow of Blood is one hell of a good read!"-Dennis Showalter, professor of history, Colorado College

"Do you know what military glory is? It is 'that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood-that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy."-Abraham Lincoln

The Union in dire peril! The war that began in Peter G. Tsouras's previous alternate history Britannia's Fist, accelerates during a few desperate weeks in October 1863. From the bayous of Louisiana to the green hills of the Hudson Valley, from Chicago in flames to the gates of Washington itself, the Great War uncoils in ropes of fire. French and British armies arc on the march, and heavy reinforcements have put to sea. Copperheads have risen in revolt to drag the Midwest into the Confederacy as a vital Union army stands starving and under siege in Tennessee. Meanwhile, Robert E. Lee and the Royal Navy set in motion a stroke that is boldness itself

The Union staggers under these blows. While the Grenadier Guards march into glory in upstate New York's apple orchards, from the second story of a shot-up Washington hotel Abraham Lincoln watches a forest of the red flags of rebellion waving over a Confederate column rushing across the Long Bridge. To stop them is a war-worn regiment of New York soldiers. To their backs Washington burns. But new technologies and the art of intelligence are thrown onto the scales, while Russia plans to enter the war to avenge its humiliation in the Crimean War.

A Rainbow of Blood brings forward the Great War from its outbreak to the first great crisis of the embattled republic. Peopled with remarkable personalities of the age, the book rattles with the tramp of armies marching down one of the most intriguing roads not taken or even imagined until now.

A former U.S. Army officer, Peter G. Tsouras is a senior military intelligence analyst, a military historian, and the author or editor of two dozen works of military history and alternate history. Many of his books have been selected by the History Book Club and the Military Book Club, and have been widely translated. He is the author of Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World WaruAn Alternate History (Potomac Books, 2008). A regular guest on the History Channel and similar venues in Britain and Canada, Tsouras lives in Alexandria, Virginia.