By spring 1919 Ukraine, the ‘breadbasket of Europe,’ has been reduced to a hellscape by the Great War in Europe and the Russian Civil War. Yet there is a new threat: a dangerous and charismatic Red Army commander who, according to reports, is planning to overthrow the new Bolshevik regime in Moscow. Just as Napoleon Bonaparte had done in France more than a hundred years before, this fanatical leader—the Red Napoleon—will start endless bloody wars to make Russia the dominant power in continental Europe. This combat journal of a White Russian cavalry officer records his squadron’s search for the renegade with orders to engage and kill him. It culminates in the bloodiest, most significant battle in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. Yet it is not the end—it is only the beginning of something far more sinister that reaches through the years into France, Turkey, and the United States. NORM MITCHELL has lived in Minnesota for thirty-five years, longer than in New York City, where he was born and grew up. His first story was published in the school literary magazine when he was six. In the fourth grade he discovered a love of history, especially that of Russia, Germany and the Balkans. History, along with writing, has been his lifelong passion. He graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, with a B.A. in history and a minor in philosophy. He has travelled extensively in North America and Europe, as well as in the Middle East with the Air Force. Much of that experience has found its way intoThe Hidden One (2019) and Prisoner of Hope (2020), the first two books in his People of the Blood trilogy.