New Historical Novel Coming Soon

On a July afternoon in 1800, when I was 18 and my brother, Robbie, was 15, we sailed our family’s one-masted skiff into the greater Boston Channel. I had finished my first term at Harvard. The sky was clear and the salty breeze was wet, warm, and brisk. As we entered the main harbor, we solemnly gazed up at Bunker Hill where Warren Jones, our grandfather we never knew, was killed in the second battle of our war for independence. 

It had only been nine months since George Washington died. There was still a somberness that affected commoners in the local taverns and privileged wealthy Americans in their salons. The country still mourned his loss.

We rounded the point and saw vessels anchored in the harbor, a huge two-masted Brig from Spain, a full-rigged frigate from France, a number of American merchant schooners, and even an Ottoman galley. Boston had become a major international port and merchant center. The sight of these new foreign vessels now seemed normal.  Although we had not lived through the war, my brother and I understood who we were, the sons of an American revolutionary and his grateful beneficiaries. The site of so many foreign ships appearing in our harbor signaled to us that a new century and a new world had opened unlimited opportunities for us. With enormous pride, we basked in the knowledge that we were first-generation inheritors of the world’s newest constitutional republic.