Desperate Valour

New Orleans, 1815. Alexander ‘Chart’ Charteris is now a major in the British Army’s 1st West India Regiment and is sent ahead of the invasion of Louisiana to gather intelligence on American defences. Operating under cover among New Orleans’s free Black militia, he becomes entangled with a local agent and with Julien Fédon, the revolutionary leader whose conflict with Chart began in Grenada.

Chart’s information about the strength of the American position is ignored, and he returns to open military service as British forces advance toward the Battle of New Orleans. The novel combines espionage with the battlefield experience of Black British troops, using the final campaign of the War of 1812 to examine slavery, racial status, imperial service and the personal costs of military duty.