With Might & Main

An historical novel of the 17th Texas Infantry in the Civil War—a regiment in the division known as Walker’s Greyhounds.In mid-1863, Captain Samuel McDowell leads Asa Moody, J.R. Lynch, the Kirksey brothers and the Kelley cousins, along with other Texas volunteers in Company K into Louisiana west of the Mississippi River. Across the river from besieged Vicksburg, they hold the grey line in Plantation Alley and fight the bloody battle at Milliken’s Bend—the first combat for the 17th Texas and the Union Regiments of African Descent who oppose the Texans.During the attack through impenetrable hedgerows and a fierce melee atop a fortified levee, Company K suffers the most casualties among the forty Confederate companies in the battle. Sergeant Sam Samson and hundreds of other just-freed plantation slaves fight hand-to-hand with the Texans. In the face of the Yankee invasion following the surrender of Vicksburg, Louisiana plantation owners drive slaves like cattle to safer territory to the west. George Calhoun, the overseer of Brokenbow Plantation owned by the Strawn family, sells nearly fifty of the Strawn’s people to outlaw slave traders and runs with the money.After Milliken’s Bend, the 17th Texas and Walker’s Greyhounds put dozens of plantations to the torch. Confederate soldiers, just steps ahead of the Union army, destroy the wealth of the Louisiana planters. The Texans defend the land by burning its white gold—cotton—and turning wealthy planters into homeless refugees.The women of the Strawn family, now fleeing to Texas themselves cross paths with Captain McDowell and his Texas soldiers, entangling their fate with the actions of the Texas soldiers. In the spring of 1864, the 17th Texas is part of General Taylor’s army striving to prevent a Union invasion of Texas—the Red River Campaign. Walker’s Greyhounds march hundreds of miles through the Howling Wilderness of Louisiana countering, but always retiring before General Bank’s inexorable advance. In early April, Walker’s Greyhounds and the 17th Texas fight again in the fateful climactic battles at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill.