During the months-long battle of St. Petersburg, the Union Army plans to dig a tunnel under Confederate lines and set off a massive bomb that will effectively end the siege.

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Real and imaginary characters mix in a first novel about the Union Army's failed attack on Petersburg, Va., whose impregnable array of fortifications stood in 1864 as the primary obstacle to General Grant's advance on Richmond. In plodding fashion, Kafka explains how Union soldiers dug a tunnel beneath the Confederate embankments, packed the space with tons of black powder, then attacked minutes after the subterranean bomb exploded. He also recounts the Union men's tragic end, as they died en masse when the high, slippery walls of the resulting crater stopped their advance within range of the counterattacking Confederates' guns. Displaying a keen knowledge of Civil War minutiae, Kafka proves more talented as a student of warfare than as a novelist: his style is often prosaic, the dialogue doesn't always ring true, and the plot regularly disgresses to give long biographies of key characters. Despite such flaws, arden Civil War buffs may enjoy this earnest re-creation of the North's bold scheme.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kafka turns a novelist's eye upon one of the final important battles of the American Civil War, the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia. Petersburg was the key in Grant's plan to defeat Lee and capture Richmond, the Confederate capital. But the Confederates were solidly entrenched there in an excellent position atop the Petersburg plateau. After conventional tactics failed miserably, a Union soldier, Irish American mining engineer Michael Curran, conceived a plan to tunnel under the Confederates and blow them out of the way. As Kafka works his way toward an explosive conclusion, he takes many detours to explore the personal history of his characters. These flashbacks are in some ways more interesting than the central event of the story, but the somewhat romanticized and slightly sentimental portraits of the characters fall several notches below the epic tone for which the author strives. The inclusion of rather cliched interracial sex scenes doesn't help. Civil War buffs will probably enjoy. Buy only where the subject is in demand.
- Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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