Unconditional

General Grant's Final Battle

By: RJ Wagner

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

He saved the Union with a sword. Now, he must save his family with a pen.

New York City, 1884. Ulysses S. Grant is the most revered man in America, but a Wall Street swindle has left him destitute. Facing a terminal diagnosis of aggressive throat cancer, the General confronts a humiliation worse than defeat: leaving his beloved wife, Julia, in absolute poverty.

Enter Mark Twain. The literary icon proposes a daring gamble to secure the Grant legacy. Fueled by cocaine to numb the agony and fighting through a fog of morphine, Grant races to finish his memoirs before the silence takes him.

Unconditional is the gripping story of the greatest literary comeback in history.

Brilliant

Having read literally dozens of books about U.S. Grant I approached this “biographical fiction” with some hesitancy. However, I think it’s a brilliant imagining of Grant’s final months as he wrote his memoir — possibly the best military memoir ever written. Yes, the author creates all of the dialogue, thoughts, and intimate actions of Grants, Samuel Clemens, Julia Grant, and others, but it all rings true (with only a slight bit of melodrama towered the end). The bare story itself, Grant rescuing his family from poverty by writing as he was dying a best selling account of the Civil War, is compelling. Warner’s fiction brings it to life and remarkably so. The audiobook deserves a real narrator, but is very good even with a virtual voice. Highly recommend!