Peter Brian

Snooks The Presidents' Man Peter Brian

Having survived many harrowing battles, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Snooks (probably Charles F. Thursby) is befriended by John Surratt and his mother, Mary. He is only 12 miles from Washington D. C. and the British legation that will finally send him home. But someone in high office has a very different fate in store for Snooks. His story introduces many famous and not so famous figures of the American Civil War. The events described are real - although at times Snooks can be a bit weak on detail. From the stage of Ford's Theatre to Southern prisons, the strong and the mighty seem bound and determined to frustrate his efforts to get home. Perhaps it had something to do with his masquerade as a former school chum, Flashman. Seduction and betrayal are the least of Snooks' problems as he tries unwillingly to complete a mission in which he doesn't believe for a man he thinks is a worse villain than himself. He is a witness to history and to tragic events, for many of which he is partly to blame. Extensively footnoted, volume 2 of Snooks' Civil War adventures along with its companion (Snooks North and South) completes the cycle and answers the questions as to why a chap named Flashman never wrote his own memoir of the War. It's fiction that happens to be very close to the truth.