Three Days in Hell: A Novel of the American Civil War

For more than two months, Union General William Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland pursued General Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee from Murfreesboro to Chattanooga. Finally, on September 18, 1863, on the banks of a small river in Northwest Georgia, the two great armies came face to face, and so began three days of hell, including the two bloodiest days of our nation’s Civil War.

Three Days in Hell is a novel, a work of fiction, based on actual historical events. The characters, with one exception, were all real people. The words they speak throughout the story are the author’s; the deeds they did, their success and failures, are their own. Drawing on many years of meticulous research, Blair Howard dramatizes one man’s contribution to the stunning Confederate victory at Chickamauga. Brigadier General Bushrod R. Johnson was the key player for the army in gray.

This is the story of Confederate General Johnson’s three days at Chickamauga, and his grand and glorious charge of more than a mile that smashed through the enemy lines and resulted in a resounding victory for the Confederate cause and an ignominious defeat for General Rosecrans. Even Johnson’s enemies praised what he did that day. Some compared it to Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, but where Pickett failed, Johnson succeeded.

Three Days in Hell, action-packed from start to finish, is the story of Confederate General Bushrod Johnson’s Chickamauga as told through the eyes and words of one of his staff officers, Major Chester Rigby. The author takes you onto the battlefield as no one has done before. He plunges you right into the center of the action, which doesn’t let up until the very end. It’s a story of heroism, desperate deeds, and death and destruction on a scale the likes of which had never been seen before.