In the early days of the Civil War, a group of very different young men gathered in Philadelphia to become members of the 95th Pennsylvania Volunteers--one of those very special units of fighting men called the Zouaves. Twenty five members of that group recognized that they shared a special bond, and called themselves the Original Twenty Five. Now it is May of 1864. The war that would be over soon is now in its fourth year, and the Original Twenty Five is now down to twelve. They are moving South yet again, under a new commander with a new strategy for finally ending this endless war. But to end the war, these surviving friends must endure a forty-day orgy of slaughter that History's greatest butchers could not have conceived--and nine endless months of a new type of warfare that carries with it mind-numbing boredom, the constant threat of sudden death, their all-consuming fears and dreams--and the madness growing within them all . . . An epic in the oldest, truest sense of the word, this is an unflinching look at outward butchery and inward suffering--and the hard-won compassion that sustains, even in defeat.