William Shea, who has already written on the Battles of Pea Ridge in Arkansas and Vicksburg in Mississippi, delivers another great book on a Civil War battle or campaign.
Fields of Blood is about the Battle of Prairie Grove in northwestern Arkansas west of Fayetteville (this reviewer has been to the battlefield and could recognize places that Shea describes). In this, one of the last major battles in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the Civil War, Union forces defeated a larger Confederate force, the beginning of the end of the Confederacy’s control of Arkansas, Indian Territory (Oklahoma), and Missouri. Had the Confederates won, they could have marched into southern Missouri and threatened St. Louis and other areas. Instead, two Union armies came together to defeat a larger Confederate army.
This is a great and very informative read about a lesser-known battle that had major consequences.