Confront the Whirlwind

When Alabama secedes from the United States, Lt. Judson Caldwell resign his naval commission and returns home. He is soon an officer in the Confederate States Navy, helping to create a fleet from whatever ships they can buy or scrounge in the southern ports. He is assigned to New Orleans to aid in the defense of that critical port. While there, he is given the chance to join Captain Raphael Semmes and the cruiser SUMTER. Though it means leaving his fiancé, Caldwell becomes the 3rd lieutenant aboard the vessel as she captures and destroys Yankee ships throughout the Caribbean. The seizure of a Union supply ship leads him to make a dangerous run past the growing blockade to deliver the badly needed materials to the struggling Confederacy. When the Union fleet attacks New Orleans, the officer and his makeshift squadron are driven from the city, only to be trapped by another federal squadron advancing from the north. As he races to finish an ironclad on the Yazoo River, will he be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice for his new nation? The third book in D. A. Joy's Richards' Family Line examines the efforts of the Confederates to create a naval force in the first two years of the war between the states.