Winner of the W.Y. Boyd Literary Novel Award for Excellence in Military Fiction by the Academic Council of the United Nations System.

With Rebel Falls, Tim Wendel takes us to late summer of 1864. The Civil War rages on. Sherman is marching on Atlanta, while the armies of Grant and Lee battle across Virginia. In the North, war-weariness has made Lincoln's bid for reelection seem doubtful. As the fate of the nation "conceived in Liberty" hangs in the balance, Confederate agents gather in Niagara Falls to plan one last audacious maneuver to turn the tide of the conflict.

Rory Chase, a capable yet haunted young woman eager to contribute to the Union cause, accepts a mission from the Secretary of State, William Seward, to travel to Niagara Falls and prevent two rebel spies, John Yates Beall and Bennet Burley, from seizing the U.S.S. Michigan on Lake Erie and bombarding Buffalo, Cleveland, and other northern cities to sow fear and disorder ahead of the upcoming election. To succeed, Rory must gain the rebel spies' trust and, with the help of the Underground Railroad network still operating out of the elegant Cataract House hotel overlooking the Falls, foil their desperate gambit. But can she maintain the pretense of being a Confederate sympathizer long enough to unravel Beall and Burley's ingenious plot?

With actual events underpinning the tumultuous story in Rebel Falls, a forgotten chapter in the history of the Civil War is revealed. Far from frontlines, Wendel's exciting, character-driven narrative about a consequential struggle in the shadow of Niagara Falls' dramatic beauty is gripping from start to finish.

Prizes

Winner of W.Y. Boyd Literary Novel Award for Excellence in Military Fiction 2025 (United States)

Based on actual yet long-obscured events, Wendel's absorbing novel is rich in dramatic history, while his depiction of Rory's internal conflicts brings depth to her high-stakes mission.

Put Tim Wendel's Rebel Falls on the shelf next to The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates and The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan. They are great Niagara novels by great Niagara-born writers. They write of its raging waters with prose so good you can almost feel the mist rising off the page. Wendel's deep research undergirds the story but does not slow it down. His novel moves swiftly, like the river that animates it.

Author Wendel provides an entertaining story that merges an interesting but largely unknown episode from the War Between the States, with historically grounded but imagined interactions with major players in the conflict.

Tim Wendel is a Writer-in-Residence at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Summer of '68, Cancer Crossings, High Heat, and the historical novels, Castro's Curveball and its sequel Escape from Castro's Cuba. He has appeared on PBS, CNN, ESPN, and NPR, and is the narrator of several audiobooks.