In the winter of 1774, while awaiting passage from London back to his home in Virginia, Kieran Selkirk is invited to a meeting with an unnamed person. The unnamed person proves to be none other than Benjamin Franklin who asks Kieran to undertake a secret mission to Moscow to persuade Tsarina Catherine the Great to decline the British request for Russian troops to travel to America to put down the expected rebellion.

 We first meet Kieran as he is traveling by land across the frozen Russian countryside in the company of Sergei Gorlov, a fellow mercenary. The sleigh and horses are attacked by a marauding band of wolves but it is the Cossacks, a vicious band of marauders who pose the greatest danger. Their leader, Pugachev, controls the largest band of Cossacks, but another Cossack to be feared is “Wolfshead”. When Kieran and Gorlov reach St. Petersburg, they are given the task of escorting a group of young ladies to Moscow. On the way, they are attacked by a band of Cossacks and manage to fend off the attack while killing many of the attackers. For this feat, they are brought to the attention of Catherine and her court. 

Randall Wallace, who also wrote BRAVEHEART, has written a great novel of the Russian court. I was swept up in the action and found it difficult to put the book down to do other tasks. LOVE AND HONOR deserves to be read over and over. The story ranks along with WAR AND PEACE in its grandeur.