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Imminent Peril is a novel of the Civil War that tells the story of the young men of the famous Wolverine Brigade, of Michigan's 5th cavalry. The story is told in the form of a memoir written by a fictitious common soldier caught up in that disastrous conflict. His comrades who fought the battles and the identities of their famous leaders are rendered as accurately as the author could make them. All of the enlisted men who appear in these pages were drawn from the actual ranks of the Union Army.
The underlying humanity and stoic response of these characters as they endure unspeakable horrors offers insight into perpetually consequential events in our nation's history, but holds special relevance to the COVID 19 health crisis raging as this book was composed. At the time of publication, the U.S. had seen more than 1,000,000 lives stolen. The only other times the citizenry has suffered so grievously on American soil were during the 1918/1919-influenza pandemic, which registered 675,000 deaths, and the Civil War, which saw more than 620,000 soldiers perish unspeakably at the hands of their fellow countrymen. Given the size of the nation at the time, almost every family experienced a grievous loss. The level of this tragedy was as incalculable then as it is now.
The Civil War defined the American scene and its culture for the decades that followed. Our nation's reconstruction following the COVID-19 pandemic will be an equally important period.
