Mired in the Great Depression, the United States teeters on the brink of revolution. And as the summer of 1932 approaches, a charismatic hobo leads twenty thousand desperate World War I veterans into the nation’s capital to demand their service compensation.

The remarkable events depicted in this sweeping historical novel are unfolded through the eyes of eight individuals who come together on a tense July day to determine the nation's fate:

-- Herbert Hoover, the beleaguered president.
-- Douglas MacArthur, the ambitious West Point general.
-- Pelham Glassford, the compassionate District of Columbia police chief.
-- Walter Waters, the troubled leader of the Bonus veterans.
-- Floyd Gibbons, the war correspondent and famous radio broadcaster.
-- Joe Angelo, the banty Italian-American who serves as George Patton's orderly.
-- Ozzie Taylor, the street musician turned Harlem Hellfighter.
-- Anna Raber, the Mennonite nurse.

This timely epic leads the reader across a memorable panorama of American history, from the Boxer Rebellion in China to the Plain of West Point, from the persecution of conscientious objectors to the horrors of the Marne, and from the Hoovervilles of the heartland to the pitiful Anacostia encampment in the bowels of the nation's capital.

Here is the shocking but little-known story of the political intrigue and government betrayal that culminated in the only pitched battle ever fought between two American armies under the same flag.