Customer Reviews

The Southern Seahawk

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Part MASTER AND COMMANDER, part KILLER ANGELS, part GONE WITH THE WIND, Randall Peffer bravely writes with energy and emotion and surehandedness in this introduction to his SEAHAWK trilogy. With spies and love affairs and a kind of wistful sense of loss like an undertow pulling it all along, we follow the real-life fate of Confederate Commander Semmes and his warship.

No one captures the details of sailing better than Randall Peffer. "He stands high up on the promenade of the packet 'Queen of the Mohawk' as the steamer beats her way north against the current." The novel is full of perfect sentences like that, perfect observations, all at the service of the story of Semmes and his lover Maude Galway, their star-crossed story at the service of the Civil War itself. Truly, no one brings to life the sea and warfare with as much eloquence as Peffer.

And no one is more curious than this reader to see how in the world he will tie off the many threads and themes of this novel in the next two installments.

Peffer's "Southern Seahawk" is a stirring sea story that takes place during the Civil War combining well known historical events with novel interpretations about the lives and actions of key players in America's greatest war. His unusual approach enables us to see how the Confederate States were able to sustain their war machine through the selective application of sea power against a much larger force.....thus enabling the CSA to remain viable for a much longer period of time. Peffer's characters that inhabit Washington can't be much different than what we see in our Nation's capital today. Human foibles can't be a recent phenomenon!

Peffer's writing style has evolved from his previous works evidencing better structure and flow. He has clearly become one of our nation's gifted writers and story tellers. "Southern Seahawk" is a historical novel that provides a creative and unusual perspective about the War.