The Spoils of War is the story that no American novelist has yet told - the impact of the Civil War on the minds and hearts of the men and women of the North.  In a rare fusion of fiction and history, Thomas Fleming has given us nothing less than a new view of America's past.  He has peopled his saga with an unforgettable gallery of men and women, struggling to cope with the passions and grief of a postwar era remarkably like our own. 
From the Fifth Avenue mansions of the Astors and the Vanderbilts to savage quarrel in a divided White House to the oath-filled chaos of a big-city newsroom, The Spoils of War takes the reader inside one of the most bizarre, least understood eras in American history.  It is a novel of extraordinary scope and power.