Another man was sent to fight in the Civil War in your place. Do you care? You were forced to go to war for another man. How do you get revenge? Merritt Moran is on a train. The bottle in his cloak is empty. His clothes stink. He can’t clear his mind of the woman from his past. The woman in the white dress. He knows his father sent another man to fight in his place, and the war turned that person from a scared innocent to an angry killer who brought revenge on Merritt’s family. Merritt must find that man for his own redemption. But where is the man? Maybe, just maybe, he’s somewhere on Peace River. "We find it to be a compelling novel that presents lesser known facts about the Civil War, and life in Florida during that period. The novel has intriguing fictional characters set in historically accurate settings and situations." -- Florida Historical Society "Eliot Kleinberg is a respected historian and a Florida treasure. His new book, Peace River, will fascinate and raise questions about a dark and creative period of Florida history." — Gary R. Mormino, Professor emeritus of History, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg      The U.S. Civil War left half of America in ruins. And its scars have yet to heal. Even today, more than a century and a half later, any discussion of it quickly leads to the same divergent talking points as in 1860.      But while total agreement never will be reached as to which side was right, this much is beyond debate: the Civil War was the greatest catastrophe, the greatest tragedy, the greatest failure in the history of the world's greatest democracy. A nation that proudly rules by law over anarchy, by the vote over the gun, by compromise over coup, could not find a way to resolve what was, admittedly, an onerous and complicated dispute, without burning many of its great cities, tearing up its infrastructure, demolishing its economy, and - most tragically - calling on a generation of young men to stand calmly in long orderly lines and literally shoot each others' brains out.      No event in U.S. history has received more attention. University of Virginia professor Gary W. Gallagher estimated more than 50,000 books and pamphlets have been published about it, a rate of one title a day since the guns fired at Fort Sumter.      And yet, no theater has been ignored by the national consciousness as much as has Florida. Well, not in Florida. Nearly one in ten of the estimated 1,000 articles in the century-plus history of the Florida Historical Quarterly is about the war and Reconstruction.      Today, Florida, filled with northern transplants and immigrants from across the world, is by far the least southern part of the South.  In 1860 it was the smallest of the eleven Confederate states, with 140,000 residents. Only a few thousand lived in its peninsula, now home to millions. Northern newspapers called it "the smallest tadpole in the dirty pool of secession."       Nevertheless, Florida had a major role in the war. Fort Pickens, near Pensacola, nearly was the site of the first shots. Florida accounted for nearly half of the Confederacy's coastline, and thus much of the blockade. Rife with loyalists, and home to federal installations that never were abandoned, it was the state Abraham Lincoln hoped to draw back to the fold first, leading to the famous battle of Olustee, featured in this tale.      Most importantly, it became by the end of the war what Florida Institute of Technology professor Robert Taylor calls the "rebel storehouse" in his book by the same name. The fall of Vicksburg cut off the staggering Confederacy from Louisiana, Arkansas, and - most critically - Texas. It turned to Florida. And soon sucked it dry of its resources. Of all states in rebellion, only Virginia suffered more financially.      That started a cycle in which Florida suffers staggering debt, tourism surges and state leaders conclude it would be even better to persuade people to move to Florida - which they do, en masse. It happened again at the turn of the 20th century, leading to the great real estate boom, and in World War II, when Florida's population was only two million. It's now more than 23 million. And all of it can be traced to the Civil War. Florida native Eliot Kleinberg, creator of the Civil War historical novel Peace River,  the "Adventures of Nate Moran" novels, and the original "Weird Florida" books, spent nearly a half-century reporting on local news and writing about Florida and Florida history. He produced two history columns and wrote fourteen books -- and co-wrote or contributed to several more -- all of them about Florida. Son of longtime journalist Howard Kleinberg, he lectures regularly on Florida topics and runs a blog on better writing called "Something Went Horribly Wrong."  Peace River is his first work of fiction.