Glory in the Name [Kindle Edition]

James L. Nelson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nelson (By Force of Arms), the author of two nautical series, offers an exciting stand-alone naval warfare adventure. This time his hero is an officer in the battered and ill-equipped Confederate Navy during the American Civil War. Shortly after the fall of Fort Sumter in 1861, Lt. Samuel Bowater resigns his commission in the U.S. Navy, torn between his pledge of loyalty to the Union and his loyalty to his home state, South Carolina. Aided by his family's influence and his previous military experience, he joins the fledgling Confederate Navy, where he is assigned to be captain of an old steam-powered tugboat converted into a gunboat. Like all of Nelson's captains, Bowater is bright, brave, resourceful and disciplined. His crew, however, is a motley collection of landsmen and sailors, men who fall under the influence of the enigmatic chief engineer, Hieronymus Taylor, the violin-playing dictator of the engine room. With the old gunboat and an unpredictable crew, Bowater is at quite a disadvantage in his battles with the powerful Union navy, especially during the spectacular battle for Roanoke Island. Meanwhile, a Mississippi plantation owner, Robley Paine, loses his three sons at the first battle of Bull Run, and he devises a crazy scheme to protect the river frontage of his property. Bowater, Taylor and the crew team up with Paine in a futile defense of New Orleans. This solid story is filled with Civil War and naval history, focusing on steam-powered warships and ironclads and on the courage of men who sailed into shot and shell for a hopeless cause. Nelson also adds suspense, romance and a bit of mystery, leaving plenty of room for the obvious sequel.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Then call us Rebels if you will we glory in the name, for bending under unjust laws and swearing faith to an unjust cause, we count as greater shame. -- Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 12, 1862

April 12, 1861. With one jerk of a lanyard, one shell arching into the sky, years of tension explode into civil war. And for those men who do not know in which direction their loyalty calls them, it is a time for decisions. Such a one is Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, an officer of the U.S. Navy and a native of Charleston, South Carolina.

Hard-pressed to abandon the oath he swore to the United States, but unable to fight against his home state, Bowater accepts a commission in the nascent Confederate Navy, where captains who once strode the quarterdecks of the world's most powerful ships are now assuming command of paddle wheelers and towboats. Taking charge of the armed tugboat Cape Fear, and then the ironclad Yazoo River, Bowater and his men, against overwhelming odds, engage in the waterborne fight for Southern independence.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 514 KB
• Print Length: 444 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0060199695
• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books (October 13, 2009)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000OI0EOA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #375,342 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

I was born in a log cabin in the sea-side town of Lewiston, Maine.... Okay, maybe not a log cabin. And maybe Lewiston isn't exactly a seaside town. Despite that, my interest in ships and the sea began early, reading Hornblower and building ship models. In high school I built a fifteen foot sailboat, and with a friend, an eighteen foot canoe.
I graduated from Lewiston High School in 1980, if not with honors then at least with a diploma. After a year of hitchhiking and motorcycling around the country, I attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, later transferring to UCLA Film School (Official Motto: '...but what I really want to do is direct...') , from which I graduated in 1986. After working in the television industry for two years, I realized that I could not stand a) the television industry, b) Los Angeles and c) being ashore. In 1988 I joined the crew of the Golden Hinde (rhymes with mind), a replica of Sir Francis Drake's vessel of 1577. There I met a foretop person named Lisa Page, whom I beat out for the job of bosun. Lisa vowed then and there to marry me and make me pay for that for the rest of my life.
Leaving the Hinde in Houston, Texas, I worked aboard the brig Lady Washington (after my time she played the Interceptor in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie) and the ship 'HMS' Rose, (Surprise in Master and Commander, also after my time) I sailed aboard Rose for two years, as Able Bodied Seaman and Third Mate.
In 1993, I 'swallowed the anchor.' Lisa Page, made good on her threat and we married that year. The following year I finished By Force of Arms, my first book. I've been a full-time writer since then, with fourteen books either published or in the process of being published. My books have sold in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain. My 2003 title Glory in the Name was selected as the winner of the American Library Association's W.Y. Boyd Award for Excellence in Military Fiction.
Recently, my writing has expanded to include non-fiction. My first work of non-fiction was Reign of Iron, a detailed look at the ironclads Monitor and Merrimack (Virginia). More recently I completed a book about the Revolutionary war naval battle that took place on Lake Champlain. That book is called Benedict Arnold's Navy.
Lisa and I now live in Harpswell, Maine (which really is a seaside town), with our four children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best Books You Will Read This Year, January 28, 2004

By 

John R. Linnell (New Gloucester, ME United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Glory in the Name: A Novel of the Confederate Navy (Hardcover)

"Ironclads at sea, armies moving by rail, communicating by telegraph. Rifled cannons, rifled rifles, exploding ordinance." They were all Americans, like it or not, all children of that particular genius that was America. How apt then that in less than a year of war, Americans fighting Americans, they should forever alter forever the very nature of warfare."

That paragraph, found late in this marvelous book, truly frames the story that plays out between it's covers.

It comes from a perspective that many of us find at least different and sometimes uncomfortable. It is a story of the Confederate Navy and is told with sympathy and understanding as well as painstaking historical attention to fact.

Samual Bowater, a former officer in the United States Navy has resigned his commission to return to his home, the Confederacy and seeks to help in the only way he knows how, by seeking to serve as a naval officer. He watches from a distance and paints the scene as Fort Sumter is fired on and the Civil War begins.

Robey Paine, a man of Mississippi with three sons to send to fight for the Confederacy believes that all of them have been lost in battle. A certian madness is the result, which will find him commissioning the conversion of a ship to an ironclad and leads him to the discovery that one of his som's has survived.

This is a moving story of a small part of the Civil War which shows it's horror and it's passion in way that is compelling.

Although I live in Maine, as does the author - about 25 miles from me - I was unaware of his writing until this book was recommended to my wife by an insightful bookstore clerk as a Christmas present for me. It is, I believe, the best book I have read in quite some time and it has already started me ordering other books written by James Nelson and looking forward to his next effort. I would give it ten stars if I could.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Civil War Fiction, May 14, 2003

By 

Mike Stimers (Bellingham) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Glory in the Name: A Novel of the Confederate Navy (Hardcover)

I've been a big Civil War buff for years, and usually I am wary of fiction, but Glory in the Name is my kind of Civil War fiction! The book is very well researched and historically accurate - historical mistakes put me right off a book, but I didn't find them here. Best of all, the action is fast and unrelenting,and the characters, especially Hironymous Taylor, pull you right in. I agree with what Bernard Cornwell wrote - the best Civil War noel I have read!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never disappointed with Nelson!, October 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Glory in the Name: A Novel of the Confederate Navy (Hardcover)

I couldn't wait for James L. Nelson's next book. I was even more pumped when I found out it was about the American Civil War. Nelson has given us the Revolutionary War at sea, which has been seldom written about, and also a great pirate series. Now for another nautical subject that hasn't been novelized very frequently.
Don't miss this one! It is a fabulous adventure. Being from the "North" I was a little sorry that the protaganoist was a Confederate, but Nelson is nothing if not even handed. He gives credit where credit is due and realizes that there was honor and glory as well as shame and stupidity on both sides. It is that element that makes his books both more complex and more enjoyable than your standard nautical adventure.
What also sets Nelson apart from so many historical novelists in general is a terrific sense of humor. There is blood and thunder galore, here, but also some laugh out loud moments. His characters live and breathe, and they themselves laugh as well as curse the horror and folly of war. And the main character Bowater gets into terrific situations only to think his way out of them in splendid fashion.
Nelson just gets better and better, and he started out near the top of the nautical heap, to be sure. It is such a pleasure to have a contemporary author that one can follow and whose books one can look forward to.