ReUNION — Harvey Ardman

Suppose the American Civil War had never happened.
Suppose Lincoln had decided a war to preserve the Union wasn't worth the massive bloodshed and economic devastation and let the Southern states secede.
Suppose that for the 160 years since then, North and South had existed, side by side, as two separate countries..
And suppose that now, in 2014, with the South bankrupt and fearing a Mexican invasion, the desperately ill Confederate President feels forced to do the unthinkable: to ask the American President to help him restore the union and reunite the country.
Can he win over the American President? And if he does, can they overcome opposition from political foes, extremists, spies, religious leaders, assassins, union bosses, and power-hungry media moguls? Can they persuade their nations to revoke Lincoln's decision, despite their intense mutual distrust and contempt and truly heal a wound that has been festering for a century and a half?
This is the premise of Reunion, a novel of alternate history set in a world similar to and quite different from our own -- a world in which Germany won WW I and became a superpower because the US did not come to England's aid, WW II -- and the Holocaust--never happened, the Russian revolution failed and China and Japan still sleep.
Reunion, of course, is fiction, but it asks the same question we are now asking of ourselves in real life: can we find sufficient reason and will to overcome those things that set us against each other and act as one country, with one voice.