In the third volume of David Poyer’s monumental Civil War at Sea cycle, North meets South in the momentous first battle between ironclads.

In Fire on the Waters America split in two and the characters in David Poyer’s Civil War at Sea series had to choose sides. Then, in A Country of Our Own, Ker Claiborne took the war north, aboard the Confederacy’s most formidable commerce raider.

Now, in That Anvil of Our Souls, David Poyer takes us into the turrets and casemates of the most historic sea engagement of the Civil War. In New York, Theo Hubbard is the engineer for a revolutionary new fighting machine, the Monitor, and is eager to become a man of means … even if it compromises his integrity. In Norfolk, Catherine Claiborne faces her husband’s impending hanging for piracy, their baby daughter’s death, and the realities of occupation.

In Richmond, Lieutenant Lomax Minter must find a spy who threatens the South’s ultimate weapon: a tremendous ironclad, rebuilt from a sunken wreck; aging Dr. Steele witnesses the horrors that are the aftermath of glory; and gun captain Hanks, escaped slave, struggles with the twin snakes of freedom.