Bootmaker To The Nation - Softcover

Slade, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1893617068 ISBN 13: 9781893617063

Publisher: Woodgate Intl, 2002

Synopsis

     BOOTMAKER TO THE NATION, a galloping historical novel, dramatizes the Revolutionary War so vibrantly that people who "hate history" will find themselves totally immersed in the saga of America's creation.  Fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, two white-haired patriots take turns telling their epic story, Benjamin from the battlefields, and his wife Genevieve from Washington's headquarters.

     The first third of this sweeping novel takes the reader on a turbulent ride through the three rebellious years leading up to the Declaration of Independence.
     Benjamin York, an apprientice shoemaker in London, is impressed into the British Navy in 1774 and forced to sail to Boston.  On the frigate, he becomes a "topman", working high in the rigging. 
     Genevieve Byrnes, a farm girl from Massachusetts, grows up hearing about the turmoil in nearby Boston.  She becomes, like her father, an expert rider, galloping along the back roads of her explosive colony.
     In Boston, Benjamin is forced to become a redcoat.  He marches to Lexington and Concord, fighting the opening skirmishes on the British side.  Captured by the Americans, he meets Genevieve and her brother Henry, a Minuteman.  Out of rage for what the British have done to him, Benjamin joins the American army.
     Follow Benjamin and Genevieve as their lives intertwine during the tumultuous opening of the eight-year war.

     In the second portion of this epic novel, soldiers carry muskets in their hands, and battered copies of the newly written Declaration of Independence in their backpacks.  Despite their rags, despite their hunger, they never quit.
     What was it that kept the troops so loyal to their Commander in Chief?  How were they able, after a winter of near starvation, to march out of Valley Forge as a professional army?
     Follow the men who are soldiers, and something more . . . They are already becoming citizens of a new nation, a nation based on their democratic dreams.

     In the final third of this great saga, the Continental Army, which has held together for eight long years, finally marches toward the battle that could finish this endless war.  With help from the French, General Washington wraps his troops around the British trapped in the port of Yorktown, Virginia.  He is poised for the kill.
     Benjamin and Genevieve experience the full horror of war . . . for victory will not come without the taking of Redoubt Ten.


    
    

About this title

About the Author

From the Library of Congress to the topmost rigging of a frigate, John Slade spent over five years weaving rich history into a magnificent epic.
He stood beside the pulpit in the Old South Meeting House in Boston, where Samuel Adams lit the first sparks of revolution.
He waited at dawn for 700 redcoats to march onto Lexington Green, where 70 colonial Minutemen, including one African-American, waited for them. 
He walked along the Broad Way in New York City, ate lunch at Fraunce's Tavern, and stood at the Battery, staring out at the harbor where British ships once anchored, preparing for the invasion.
He struggled through a fierce blizzard at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
He dashed at night across the battlefield at Yorktown, Virginia.
John Slade has been there on the sacred land.

He visited the Oneida Indians in central New York, so that he could tell the story of their important contribution to General Washington's army.
He read books long neglected, so that he could tell the story of African-American troops in General Washington's army.  During the long winter at Valley Forge, one out of eleven soldiers, nearly ten percent of the army, was African-American.
Slade tells the story of heroic women, riding through the night as courriers, bringing water to the men on the battlefield.

Enter a world that never before was so alive, so powerful, and so important to our world today.

From the Back Cover

Our nation needs to re-explore its extraordinary foundation.
This galloping story, set during the entire American Revolution, will enable you to relive those crucial years.
This unique and powerful book will also enable you to help build the America that we need today.

You will finally love American history; understand our nation's first war; meet our Founding Fathers as people, not as wooden heroes; and look to the future with an educated eye.

From the Inside Flap

Foreword by Samuel Adams

As my cousin John well knew, the Revolution that brought an entirely new nation onto the stage of the world, and planted an entirely new dream in the hearts of all people, began with a people who demanded not land, nor wealth, nor power, but freedom from tyranny. The farmer, the shoemaker, the blacksmith knew right from wrong, and demanded to live according to what was right. They did not wish to be soldiers, but free men. They did not wish to be conquerors, but equal men. They did not wish to be aristocrats, but men who knew the profit of their own hard work.

These were the "rabble" whom I encouraged, the rebels whom John represented in Congress, the men for whom Thomas Jefferson wrote his sacred text, the "winter warriors" with whom General Washington defeated the most powerful army and navy in the world. These were the common people, who rose above their common lives for eight and a half years of privation and anguish and grief, until their triumph gave to the world an unprecedented form of government. Its charter began with three words, unknown during all previous centuries of human history, "We the People".

This book, about a common shoemaker, about a farm girl, about a carpenter, about a widow and her son, and about the Commander in Chief who loved every soldier, every citizen, more than he loved himself, asks the reader today to continue the fragile American "experiment" with the same integrity, and determination, and mindfulness of the world beyond our shores, that once guided the good people who forged, more for posterity than for themselves, the golden chalice of freedom.

Edition details

• Publisher: Woodgate Intl
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1893617068
• ISBN 13: 9781893617063
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 721