The Snakebit Series
This is a fictional account of the American Civil War and its aftermath, as told by and through the Maryland Garrett family, their friends and enemies. It is not a single, continuing story arc. As it meanders across the country, North, South, East and West, it becomes more a collection of interrelated short stories that reveal engaging historical and cultural details to titillate the reader and make the conflict and the era come to life. The series covers 1859 to 1877, from the period leading up to the contentious election of Abraham Lincoln through the troubled Grant Administration. Ultimately Snakebit exposes the reader to the origin of our current, seemingly irreconcilable, societal divide. Warning: authentic period dialogue includes many racial epithets. I do not condone nor encourage their use and I apologize for any offense they may cause the reader. Sadly, bias and bigotry were and still are an integral part of American culture.
Volume #1 Snakebit: Prelude to War
1857-1860
The Western Maryland, Garret family, struggle to maintain their farm as their neighbors argue the slavery issue. They live in a border state where folks take both sides and emotions run hot. Their stoic matriarch, known only as "Mother" holds the family together in the absence of her dead husband. The deceased patriarch, Valentine, who was a giant of a man both in stature and character. He acts as the family supernatural conscience and mentor throughout the series. It is his admonition that people who get snakebit think and act crazy which is how he viewed the state of the country when he died.
Gabe the eldest and an adventurer, has wandered off to Bleeding Kansas. This has left taciturn Geoffrey, the spitting image of Valentine, as man of the house. Intelligent, beautiful, Becca is being suited by two beaus, twins no less. But she aspires to something better than being just a backwoods wife. Samuel, the youngest, is the wildest member of the clan. Impetuous and ornery. he keeps the family occupied - for good or ill.
As the novel progresses historical characters are also introduced, including Abraham Lincoln, future President of the Union and Alexander Stephens, future vice President of the Confederacy. Some characters attend historical milestones like the tense trial of John Brown in Charles Town, Virginia, the 1859 Republican Political Convention in Chicago, and the Contentious Democratic Convention in Charleston South Carolina. In each instance the question of race tears at the fabric of American society. Ultimately, bitter recriminations lead to secession and war in volume two of FIRE-EATERS. Each chapter of each book is a self-contained story. just as each book can stand alone. But through it all the Garretts, their friends and family tell our American story, the story we didn't hear about in school.
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Initial Reactions
Often in my opinion, historical novels are too much fish or too much fowl. too many facts or too many fictions. Poniske does a fine job of keeping the story, the characters and the action moving. Their conversations, ruminations and even their reflections ring true.
It is refreshing to find a series on the Civil War that begins before the bombardment of Fort Sumter. This one does not only that but adds stories of the Irish coming across the Atlantic as well as those who farmed in the East and those that traveled West, and even eyewitness John Brown’s trial.
Volume #2 Fire-Eaters
1860-1861
Here readers learn of the chaos building over the issue of slavery and the upcoming 1860 Presidential election in Western Maryland. Lincoln's election has causes national division. Visits are made to Washington DC, Richmond, and Baltimore. The Garretts are not at all partial to slavery and they run afoul of Burns, an antagonistic slave catcher. Burns is later involved in the destruction of their home and farm. Recovering from a severe beating, the current patriarch of the family, Geoff, sets off to track him down. Cotton diplomacy comes into play as do period relationships with slaves, freemen, and Indians. Everywhere, regional militias are established and readers come to understand the importance of Virginia in the coming crisis. The novel ends with Geoff closing in on Burns.
Purchase Here
Audio version available
Initial Reactions
Often in my opinion, historical novels are too much fish or too much fowl. too many facts or too many fictions. Poniske does a fine job of keeping the story, the characters and the action moving. Their conversations, ruminations and even their reflections ring true.
It is refreshing to find a series on the Civil War that begins before the bombardment of Fort Sumter. This one does not only that but adds stories of the Irish coming across the Atlantic as well as those who farmed in the East and those that traveled West, and even eyewitness John Brown’s trial.
Volume #3 Choosing Sides
1861
The third novel in the series puts the Garrett family in a precarious situation. Living in Western Maryland between the Loyal Northern States and the Confederacy. Fort Sumter has already been fired upon and taken. Where war had been threatened, war is now a grim reality. Burned out for ministering to runaways, the Garrets sell their land and move closer to the Mason-Dixon. There a slave girl rescued by Geoffrey in the previous novel is kidapped by her old owner. The same slave catcher who helped burn the Garretts out. This results in an exciting chase along the banks of the Potomac. Witness confrontations outside Fortress Monroe and again at Ball’s Bluff, both federal disasters. Visit Lincoln in Washington and Davis in Richmond. As McClellan gathers troops on the Peninsula, we accompany a blockade runner threading the needle through a Union naval gauntlet.
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1960903195?lv=shuf&language=he&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
Audio version available
Initial Reactions
The best historical fiction teaches you about historical events while making you feel like you're right in the middle of them. What makes John Poniske's books about the Civil War unique is how he takes things one step further so that you feel - and understand - the powerful emotions held by those on both sides. And those caught between them. It is illuminating but unfortunate how some of these attitudes and emotions live with us today. These books are highly recommended for those with a deep interest in the Civil War.
There are good scholars of American history who write solid workmanlike prose and there are good fiction writers whose characters take life by the throat and run with it. The combination of legitimate research and an engrossing story is rare in my experience. I am so glad to have found this series! Poniske's books are the best of both worlds, truly historical and truly creative.
Volume #4 The Crack Widens
1862
Eleven Southern states break with the Union. The peculiar institution of slavery, its continuation and spread into the Western Territories becomes the sticking point. Opinions are as divided as the country, and emotions run hot. Because of their abolitionist leanings, the Garretts have their homestead burned. They have lost their patriarch, Valentine. His brother, James, falls at Bull Run. Their friend and Mennonite neighbor, Aaron, is lost at Ball’s Bluff. In the midst of it all, Toby, a little slave girl is rescued and taken in by the family as they pack up and move to Hagerstown, an important Maryland city near the Mason-Dixon. In the first half of 1862, all hell breaks loose. Gabriel Garrett becomes a war correspondent but finds himself waylaid and caught up in a Kentucky moonshine operation. Forts Henry and Donelson fall to Grant’s assaults. Iron juggernauts clash at Hampton Roads, Confederates invade New Mexico Territory, and New Orleans falls as federal armies march up the Virginia Peninsula. In our fratricidal dive into the past we hear the perspectives of freedmen and slaves, Northern and Southern politicians, generals and privates, businessmen and preachers.
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Audio version available soon
Volume #5 Cattywampus
1862
The abolitionist Garretts and the Slaver McCunes are border state natives still haunted by the moral ghost of the Garrett patriarch, Valentine, and the evil machinations of the McCune patriarch, Jake. Together, or on their own, family members experience, Slaughter’s Mountain, an Indian uprising on the Plains, a German uprising in Texas, as well as the battles of Second Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. They enter common homes and glittering mansions. They interact with historical characters as well as fictional, and along their journey, they visit the capitals of Richmond and Washington, allowing you the reader to peer behind the curtain, to participate in historical decision-making. In 1862, both North and South were certain of victory. The four-million-strong black population knew one of them would win but, either way, where would it leave them? Slavery and Abolition, one or the other were intertwined in every political decision. Slavers and abolitionists drove the politicians to war, for after all, aren’t politicians the spearpoint of any conflict.
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Audio Book Planned
Volume #6 Lincoln’s Hirelings
1863
The Garretts and McCunes wander across our war ravaged Dis-United States of America in 1863. It is a time of tremendous upheaval. The Confederacy rallies at the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville after which the Union’s victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg tamp down Southern aspirations. In the course of this dramatic confrontation, Geoffrey Garrett goes to work at an Iron Foundry with his black charge, Toby, where they go to work at Thaddeus Steven’s Iron Foundry just outside of Gettysburg while Blake McCune investigates slave insurance in Western Maryland. Sergeant Sharp McCune woos his love in Richmond, Virginia while correspondent Gabriel Garrett marches with Grant in the swamps of Louisiana.
Black Americans, yet to be citizens, are also drawn into the conflict as Congress allows the formation of the USCT (United States Colored Troops). All around the country courageous black leaders make their presence and their intentions known: Frederick Douglass in Washington’s Halls of Power, Harriet Tubman in the Carolinas, Andre Caillox and PBS Pinchback, in New Orleans.
With the help of a host of hopeful African Americans, the tide of war is turning.
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Audio Book Planned
Volume #7 Sundering Slavery
1863-1864
A Nation is divided. Families have been torn apart. Civil War changed everything.
When Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman cross paths in the capital, their unlikely conversation reveals just how much they share and how much America stands to lose. It is the bloody second year of the Civil War. Gettysburg has fallen. Vicksburg is gone. The Confederacy reels, yet Jefferson Davis refuses to surrender.
In West Maryland, two neighboring families embody the nation’s fracture. The McCunes, slave-owners divided among themselves, clash with the abolitionist Garretts, who question whether war is the only path to freedom. Brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends each is forced to choose a side as the conflict reaches from prison cells to presidential chambers, from steamships to dining tables, and from bustling Baltimore streets to the smoke of southern battlefields.
As the war rages, African American soldiers shock a divided nation by taking up arms, altering the fate of slavery forever. And when Ulysses S. Grant launches his relentless Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee, the struggle reaches its shattering climax earning Grant a name that will haunt history: “The Butcher.”
Sundering Slavery, Book Seven in SNAKEBIT’s sweeping 16 volume saga, continues its epic journey through America’s darkest conflict where ordinary families and towering figures alike are forever changed by Civil War.
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Audio Book Planned
Volume #8 Political Quadrille
1864
The year is 1864 — and the nation hangs by a thread.
Lincoln’s reelection is uncertain. Political rivals circle like vultures. The war grinds on with staggering losses. And the question that haunts every home, battlefield, and ballot box remains: will the Union survive?
In Political Quadrille: Our Flag Is Sagging, the eighth riveting installment in the sweeping Snakebit Series, the tide of the American Civil War enters its most volatile chapter. From smoke-choked battlefronts to the chambers of Washington, from Grant’s blood-soaked campaign to the back-room intrigue of presidential politics, the fate of the nation is up for grabs.
Through soldiers, families, newspapermen, and political power players, a powerful portrait ia displayed of a country sundered by war and divided by principle. Loyalties fracture. Elections teeter. The Confederacy dares a final gambit. The Union bleeds, and yet strives to endure.
Rich in historical detail and fearless in truth-telling, Political Quadrille brings the war’s most pivotal year to life with emotional depth, moral tension, and narrative fire. The conflict that shaped America forever ends, but the struggle is far from over.
The battle for America’s soul continues.
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Audio Book Planned
Volume #9 Triumph & Tragedy
1865
As the Civil War draws toward its bitter conclusion in 1865, victory is finally within reach,
but at a devastating cost.
Across a fractured nation, soldiers, families, and survivors grapple with the consequences of a war that has torn apart homes, loyalties, and hearts. On the frozen front lines, young men from opposing sides share fleeting moments of humanity, only to be swallowed again by violence. Behind the lines, families struggle to endure loss, uncertainty, and impossible choices.
From daring raids and battlefield heroism to whispered letters and personal sacrifice, lives collide in a nation on the brink of transformation. Old alliances crumble. New identities emerge. And for many, survival itself becomes the ultimate victory.
But when the fighting ends… what remains?
In this powerful ninth installment of the sweeping Snakebit Series, John Poniske delivers a gripping portrait of courage, heartbreak, and the enduring question:
What is the true price of victory?
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Audio Book Planned
Volume #10 Triumph & Tragedy
1865-1866
The guns have fallen silent, but America is far from at peace.
The Civil War has ended, Abraham Lincoln is dead, and four million formerly enslaved people face an uncertain future. As Union armies celebrate victory and Confederate soldiers return to shattered homes, the nation confronts an even greater challenge: rebuilding a country still bitterly divided by race, politics, and the meaning of freedom.
In Uncivil Peace, John Poniske carries the Snakebit Series into the turbulent beginnings of Reconstruction. From the first celebrations of Juneteenth in Texas to the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the struggles of newly freed families, and the growing political battle between President Andrew Johnson and Radical Republicans, the promise of emancipation collides with resistance throughout the South.
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Audio Book Planned
Six more books involving RECONSTRUCTION
upcoming
in the SNAKEBIT SERIES!
Novel #11 PROMISES GIVEN (1867-1869)
Novel #12 PROMISES GIVEN (1869-1870)
