Settling Accounts: The Grapple

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The Grapple
Cover of Hodder & Stoughton 2006 paperback edition
Author	Harry Turtledove
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Alternate History
Publisher	Settling Accounts series
Publication date	July 2006
Media type	Print (Paperback & Hardback)
ISBN	0-345-45725-0
OCLC Number	62697178
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 22
LC Classification	PS3570.U76 S475 2006
Preceded by	Settling Accounts: Drive to the East
Followed by	Settling Accounts: In at the Death

Settling Accounts: The Grapple by Harry Turtledove is the third book in the Settling Accounts tetralogy, an alternate history setting of World War II in North America. It is part of the Timeline-191 series, which supposes that the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War. It takes the Timeline-191 Earth from 1943 to 1944.

Plot summary

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U.S. General Irving Morrell's campaign to drive Confederate forces out of Pennsylvania and Ohio is successful, and now pushes them through Kentucky, Tennessee, and ultimately Georgia. At the Battle of Chattanooga American forces land paratroopers on top of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, rather than fight their way to the top in hard-fought battles. Having gained Chattanooga, Morell seems bent on driving to the Atlantic Ocean through Georgia, thus cutting the Confederate territory in two. Confederate General George S. Patton, does less well on the defence than he did in the attack on Ohio two years before, his pugnacious instincts making him squander irreplaceable resources on futile attempts at counter-attack.

The operation of Camp Determination in Texas continues, where blacks are being murdered in gas chambers by the hundreds of thousands, and U.S. General Abner Dowling's is attempting to shut it down by leading an attack toward its location. With only marginal forces at his disposal, this proves difficult to accomplish. Dowling does send his air support to bomb the railways on which horribly crowded cattle cars full of blacks are brought in. However, the advance takes too long; the sound of distant U.S. artillery had aroused some hope among the condemned black inmates, but when the U.S. forces finally arrive they find nothing but enormous mass graves with not a single survivor, and with the murder operation transferred to an "improved camp" in east Texas. Among the innumerable victims is Scipio. Despite this Confederate blacks continue to find ways to resist. In Richmond, the Confederate capital, blacks rebel seeking not to save their lives but to die with weapons in hand and exact a price from their murderers. Meanwhile, fighting continues among black guerrilla bands in the Georgia countryside.

As the war rages, the race between American and Confederate physicists to build a "uranium (i.e., atomic) bomb" continues. The Confederates desperately try to recover from Confederate President Jake Featherston's strategic blunder of initially not taking the bomb seriously and having held up research for over a year. They launch an air raid on the U.S. nuclear project in the state of Washington, to which the Americans reply in kind by bombing Washington University at Lexington, the center of Confederate nuclear research. Meanwhile, Imperial Germany seems ahead of both the North American powers in the construction of a uranium bomb.

In Europe, German and Austrian forces are gradually pushing the French, British and Russian forces back. Irish and Serb uprisings continue to operate, and Ukraine continues as a battleground for both sides. The Russians are unable to concentrate on their Alaskan possessions.

In Virginia, ground fighting seems largely quiet, but both sides are able to launch air strikes against the other, although the Confederates are not able to launch attacks quite as often due to heavy losses.

The Mormon rebellion in Utah is suppressed (for the third time) and the U.S. characters debate the morality of various ways of dealing with the problem again. It seems a plan of exiling the Mormons from Utah and deporting them are drawn up.

Meanwhile, the Canadian rebellion is fully active, prompting units which had been active in the Utah fighting to be transferred to Canada. The troops from the U.S.-backed Republic of Quebec are not numerous enough or motivated enough to hold off the Canadian guerrillas.

Fighting in Sequoyah (Oklahoma) appears to be back-and-forth, with both sides sabotaging the oil wells there. A general advance seems to be made in Arkansas, and U.S. forces are pressing the offensive in Sonora and Chihuahua.

Allegiances at the top of the Confederate government are beginning to show strain as losses the Confederacy is taking mount. There is a pronounced tension between Brigadier General Clarence Potter and President Jake Featherston, Camp Determination administrator Jefferson Pinkard and Confederate Attorney General Ferdinand Koenig, and between Koenig and Featherston. Featherston engages in shouting matches with his commanding officers over their tactics. Angered with his generals, Featherston's puts all of his faith on "wonder weapons" to win the war. Most ominously, despite the increasingly desperate military situation, Featherston continues to consider the diversion of considerable resources to the extermination program as justified and necessary, since "The War Against the Negroes" is a most important goal which must be "fought" and "won" by total extermination and making the Confederate territory "Negro-free."

At sea, the Japanese threat to the Sandwich Islands is ended with a naval victory at Midway, and American forces retake Midway Island. Neither side has any real desire to pursue the war further, and there are strong hints that the Japanese might attack British possessions in Malaya and India.

The U.S. Navy also smuggles arms to a nascent rebellion in Cuba, in which a teenage Fidel Castro participates. The United States is able to recapture Bermuda in a costly action and is threatening to move to the South Atlantic, to cut off food shipments from Argentina to the United Kingdom.

The U.S. President Charles La Follette asked the Confederate States for unconditional surrender. Featherston replied with a defiant speech and launched two long-range rockets from bases in Virginia onto Philadelphia. The damage was light but the psychological damage was much heavier.

Publication history

The Grapple is the third book in the tetralogy, following 2005's Settling Accounts: Drive to the East and 2004's Settling Accounts: Return Engagement, and preceding Settling Accounts: In at the Death, released in 2007. It was released in the United States on July 25, 2006. The book was released in the United Kingdom on October 5, 2006.