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.
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.
