Grant’s Grim Road to Richmond
Ralph Peters’ Hell or Richmond is the second novel in his Battle Hymn Cycle, following Cain at Gettysburg. It offers a compelling and often brutal account of Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign, told through the perspectives of the commanders and soldiers who endured it. The novel covers the roughly thirty-day campaign that began in May 1864, moving from the tangled forests of the Wilderness through Spotsylvania Court House and the infamous Bloody Angle before reaching the disastrous Union assault at Cold Harbor. Rather than treating these battles as isolated events, Peters presents them as stages in one relentless struggle. Grant keeps moving south and attacking, while Robert E. Lee repeatedly tries to block his path and preserve the Army of Northern Virginia. …
