Settling Accounts: Return Engagement
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| Return Engagement | |
| Author | Harry Turtledove |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Settling Accounts series |
| Genre(s) | Alternate History |
| Publication date | August 2004 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback & Hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-345-45723-4 |
| Preceded by | American Empire: The Victorious Opposition |
| Followed by | Settling Accounts: Drive to the East |
- For the 1990 Hong Kong film, see Return Engagement (film).
Return Engagement is the first book of Harry Turtledove's Settling Accounts series of alternate history novels. It is an analogy of World War II being waged on American soil between the United States and the Confederate States.
This series is part of a larger series of novels. For convenience's sake, many Turtledove fans refer to this as Timeline-191, after Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191, or as the Southern Victory series.
[edit] Plot summary
Following the return of the occupied states of Kentucky and Houston to the Confederacy in early 1941, President Jake Featherston breaks his solemn vow and re-militarizes them, essentially declaring war against the United States in act if not in word. US President Al Smith hurries to prepare for war, but his country is sent reeling by the Confederate attack into Ohio on June 22, 1941.
The Yankees under General Abner Dowling and Colonel Irving Morrell fight desperately but by 1942 the Confederate Army has reached the shores of Lake Erie and cut the country in two. Meanwhile, the Mormons in Utah have once again revolted, prompting a swift response from the US Army. A US counterattack in Virginia bogs down, and the Confederates are preparing a second offensive for the summer of 1942 when Al Smith is killed in a bombing raid on the capital city of Philadelphia. A shaken Charlie La Follette is sworn in as President of a nation fighting for its survival.
Meanwhile in the Confederacy the murderous persecution of Blacks is escalating towards a full-scale Genocide, similar to our timeline's Holocaust. Another hint of things to come is provided when Featherston makes a strategic blunder in rejecting the offer of a physics professor to start research towards producing nuclear weapons, believing that the professor just wants government money to finance an abstruse scientific project - while it is hinted that the US does start a version of the Manhattan Project, located in this case in the state of Washington and overseen by Franklin Roosevelt - in this world an Assistant Secretary of War harboring no presidential ambitions.
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| Videssos books | Videssos Cycle | The Misplaced Legion | An Emperor for the Legion | The Legion of Videssos | The Swords of the Legion |
| The Tale of Krispos | Krispos Rising | Krispos of Videssos | Krispos the Emperor | |
| Time of Troubles | The Stolen Throne | Hammer and Anvil | The Thousand Cities | Videssos Besieged | |
| The Bridge of the Separator | ||
| The Race or Tosev timeline series |
Worldwar Tetralogy | In the Balance | Tilting the Balance | Upsetting the Balance | Striking the Balance |
| Colonization | Second Contact | Down to Earth | Aftershocks | |
| Homeward Bound | ||
| Southern Victory or Timeline-191 |
How Few Remain | |
| Great War Trilogy | American Front | Walk in Hell | Breakthroughs | |
| American Empire Trilogy | Blood and Iron | The Center Cannot Hold | The Victorious Opposition | |
| Settling Accounts Tetralogy | Return Engagement | Drive to the East | The Grapple | In at the Death | |
| Darkness | Into the Darkness | Darkness Descending | Through the Darkness | Rulers of the Darkness | Jaws of the Darkness | Out of the Darkness | |
| War Between the Provinces | Sentry Peak | Marching Through Peachtree | Advance and Retreat | |
| Hellenic Traders | Over the Wine Dark Sea | The Gryphon's Skull | The Sacred Land | Owls to Athens | |
| Crosstime Traffic | Gunpowder Empire | Curious Notions | In High Places | The Disunited States of America | The Gladiator | The Valley-Westside War | |
| Pacific War Series | Days of Infamy | End of the Beginning | |
| Scepter of Mercy | The Chernagor Pirates | The Bastard King | The Scepter's Return | |
| Other, non-series books | ||
| Agent of Byzantium | A Different Flesh | Noninterference | Kaleidoscope | A World Of Difference | Earthgrip | The Guns of the South | The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump | Departures | Down in the Bottomlands | The Two Georges | Thessalonica | Between the Rivers | Justinian | Household Gods | Counting Up, Counting Down | Ruled Britannia | In the Presence of Mine Enemies | Conan of Venarium | Every Inch a King | Fort Pillow | Beyond the Gap | Opening Atlantis | The Battle of Teutoberg Forest | ||
