The sands of pride

by William R. Trotter

"Centered in Wilmington, North Carolina, during a bawdy "Golden Age," Trotter's saga intertwines the fates of more than two dozen major characters - real and fictional, Union and Confederate, combatants and civilians. Chronicled are the exploits of staid plantation owner turned audacious sea captain Matthew Sloane; intrepid Federal naval officer William Barker Cushing; sadistic bushwacker Cyrus Bone; the seductive Confederate spy, Belle O'Neal; Jacob Landau, scion of a Jewish merchant family at whose emporium blockade-runners' goods bring in Confederate dollars; and Augustus Hobart-Hampden, unofficial representative of Queen Victoria to the Confederacy and lover of Jacob's daughter, Largo. At the confluence of the many stories flowing through this grand narrative towers Fort Fisher - literally built of sand - the most formidable earthen fortress ever erected in America. This symbol of Southern defiance, the guardian of Wilmington's boisterous docks, helped keep the South stocked with a