Frustrated by Abraham Lincoln's reluctance to approve his battle strategy in the American Civil War, General George B. McClellan takes the extraordinary step of marching his army into the nation's capital and placing the President of the United States under arrest. The U.S. Constitution is suspended and Congress is sent home.
Now, ten years later, the United States are still under military rule. Despite a cease fire that has stopped the fighting between the Northern and Southern states, McClellan remains in power, and his government continues to hunt and arrest those who oppose the general's autocratic regime. Spies of the National Intelligence Service are everywhere, seeking out those who wish to restore the old democracy, and the countryside is under the thumb of a mounted military police force called the United States Gendarmerie.
Sylvanus Cadwallader, correspondent for the Chicago Times, is on a personal mission. His brother-in-law, also a newspaper reporter, has disappeared without a trace, and Cadwallader suspects that he may have become a political prisoner of the commanding general's government. His hunt for the truth behind his brother-in-law's disappearance leads him into a web of secrets, intrigue, and danger. Accompanying him on his perilous quest are a disgraced former Union general named Ulysses S. Grant and a writer of unusual stories named Ambrose Bierce. Together they hope to learn the truth behind the man who has set himself up as the American Bonaparte.
AMERICAN BONAPARTE is the first in a series of alternate history novels set in the timeline that is formed when George McClellan takes over the United States government. Famous names from history are used as prominent characters, their lives altered by the consequences of the changed events of the past. The story is a mix of mystery, action, and political intrigue as we explore the world of 1872 in an America that might have been. Later novels in the McClellan Regime series will revisit the alternate timeline at other points in the future as we approach our own time.
