The Roll of the Dice

As the fires of war spread across a divided nation, three brothers from Louisiana are swept into the storm that will decide the fate of the Confederacy-and perhaps the future of America itself.

In the bloody aftermath of Fredericksburg, young Confederate officer Johan Lutze escapes Union captivity through courage, cunning, and sheer determination. Returning to General Robert E. Lee's army just in time for the Battle of Chancellorsville, Johan performs an act of heroism that saves the life of the legendary General Stonewall Jackson and thrusts him into the inner circle of Confederate power.

Now, with Vicksburg under siege and the Confederacy teetering between survival and collapse, Johan's bold strategic ideas begin to influence President Jefferson Davis himself. But in Richmond, ambition and politics can be as deadly as bullets, and not everyone welcomes the rise of the young officer from Louisiana.

While Johan helps shape daring military campaigns alongside Generals Lee, Beauregard, and Johnston, his brothers wage battles of their own. Paul Lutze Jr., maimed at Shiloh and fitted with a prosthetic leg, enters the shadowy world of Confederate espionage, where secrets and sabotage may alter the course of the war. Meanwhile, sixteen-year-old Jacques Lutze marches north with the ferocious Louisiana Tigers, consumed by grief, vengeance, and a burning desire to kill Yankees before they kill him.

From the fields of Pennsylvania to the banks of the Mississippi, from the halls of Richmond to the courts of Europe and the rising empire in Mexico, the war expands into a conflict of global consequence. Armies maneuver. Governments scheme. Brothers bleed.

And as the summer of 1863 approaches its reckoning, the Lutze brothers will stand at the center of history-where triumph and tragedy walk hand in hand.