Following his acclaimed debut,Waterborne,Bruce Murkoff now gives us another American panorama in a Civil War novel unlike any other. Born in the Hudson Valley to a family steeped in wars both before and after independence, Will Harp returns home in 1864 for the first time in a decade, disconsolate over the campaigns being waged against Indians in the West even as the nation tears itself apart. But for others, these are heady days: a businessman whose prosperity has brought his grandest dream within reach; his brutal enforcer, an enterprising Irish immigrant whose predecessor, his sister's fiancÉ, has gone missing in the horrors of Cold Harb∨ a resourceful thirteen-year-old orphan facing new opportunities, both good and ill. These and other lives will intertwine when Will discovers the bones of a mastodon on a nearby farm, which allow him to pursue a long-held interest. But his newfound purpose will interfere with the hopes and sorrows of others, throwing all their fates into uncertainty, with calamity threatening to envelop them all. Engrossing and revelatory, rich with vivid characterization and not one gripping love story but several,Red Rainweaves together stories from greatly various times and places that converge, here in Rondout, New York, with heart-stopping intensity.