Peter Cozzens meticulously traces the chain of events as the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of Tennessee meet in Middle Tennessee on New Year's Eve 1862 in one of the bloodiest encounters of the Civil War.

A mere handful of battlefields have come to epitomize the anguish and pain of America's Civil War: Gettysburg, Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga. Yet another name belongs on that infamous list: Stones River, the setting for Peter Cozzens's No Better Place to Die.