Three Days in Hell: A Novel of the American Civil War

Three days that turned quiet Georgia woods into a slaughterhouse.
A mile long charge that shattered a Union army and made Civil War history.
Ride with the man who led it, and the officer who saw it all.

For more than two months in 1863, Union General William Rosecrans and the Army of the Cumberland hound General Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee from Murfreesboro to Chattanooga. The chase ends on September 18, on the banks of a small river in northwest Georgia, when two great Civil War armies finally collide. What follows are three days of hell, including two of the bloodiest days in the entire American Civil War.

Three Days in Hell is a gripping novel of Chickamauga, told through the eyes of Major Chester Rigby, Confederate States Army, aide de camp to Brigadier General Bushrod R. Johnson. It is a work of fiction that is firmly based on documented history. Nearly every character in these pages was a real person. The words they speak are the author’s. The deeds they do, and the triumphs and failures they endure, are their own.

Drawing on many years of meticulous research, Blair Howard dramatizes one man’s crucial role in the stunning Confederate victory at Chickamauga. Brigadier General Bushrod R. Johnson becomes a key player for the army in gray, holding fragile lines, rallying shattered brigades, and finally leading a grand and glorious charge of more than a mile that smashes through the Union position and sends Rosecrans’s army reeling.

This is the story of Johnson’s three days at Chickamauga. His breakthrough drew praise even from enemies and was compared to Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. There is one great difference. Where Pickett failed, Johnson succeeded.

Action packed from start to finish, Three Days in Hell takes you onto the battlefield as few Civil War novels ever have. Through Major Rigby’s eyes you move with staff officers and line troops alike, ride through storms of shot and shell, and feel the chaos as orders are carried, changed, or lost in the smoke. It is a story of heroism and desperate deeds, of confusion, courage, and collapse, and of death and destruction on a scale the nation had never seen before.

Three Days in Hell: A Novel of the American Civil War is perfect for readers who love Civil War stories based on real battles, historically accurate military fiction, and intense, character driven accounts of the Western Theater. If you enjoyed Chickamauga and The Mule Soldiers, this fact based novel will pull you deeper into the war that shaped a nation.

Also available on Amazon!