The Order of Virtue

A brutal murder, a vanished fortune, and a secret born in the ashes of the Civil War…

In the final months of the American Civil War, Judah P. Benjamin, brilliant attorney, diplomat, spymaster, and a Jewish statesman accustomed to a subtle prejudice that shadowed his career, convinces Confederate President Jefferson Davis to create a contingency plan should Richmond fall. Gold and Mexican silver, code-named Aurelian, would be secretly moved, intended to fund the South’s resurrection from the ashes of war. But Benjamin soon realizes the treasure has fallen into dangerous hands. To save it from the claws of a rabid antisemite, he forms the Order of Virtue, a clandestine brotherhood protected by ciphers so intricate that historians dismissed them as nonsense for over a century, lacking the technology to crack the codes, until now.

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