13 Days to Glory - the Siege of the Alamo

Lon Tinkle tells the day-by-day story of how 182 men fought a losing battle but won for their cause an almost unparalleled measure of fame. As the days of the siege are described, the author cinematically flashes back to pivotal points of destiny-the circumstance that led each person to be inside the walls of the abandoned mission late in the winter of 1836. Susanna Dickinson, captured after the mission fell, recalls the day she headed for a wedding and wound up eloping to Texas with the intended groom, an old flame of her own. Travis left Alabama under a cloud, having privately admitted to committing a murder. Bowie, having lost his wife, children, and wealthy in-laws to a cholera epidemic, now devoted his energies to saving his extensive landholdings in Texas. Crockett, stung by the loss of his seat in Congress, concluded to light out for the territory of Texas, where land prices were one-tenth of those in America but where American frontier traditions again had to be secured through revolution.