Washington and Caesar

A sweeping historical novel about the roles of two remarkable men in the American Revolution: George Washington and Caesar -- Washington's ex-slave who escaped to fight against his former master. This novel shatters some of the most enduring myths of American history -- myths about the colossus George Washington; myths about the idea of liberty and what it meant; myths about slavery; and myths about the role of black soldiers who found freedom fighting in the British army against the self-proclaimed idealists of freedom and independence. It chronicles, in accurate historical detail, the battles and major events of the American Revolution as experienced by two very different characters. George Washington, who at the outset of war is an ambitious landowner and by the end has attained great political power, and Caesar, one of Washington's many slaves, who escapes and joins the British Corps of Guides and Pioneers, which was the most decorated Loyalist unit of the Revolution -- and was composed entirely of escaped slaves. Washington and Caesar is a novel about white and black; owner and slave; naked ambition and powerless submission turned to rebellion. It is a novel about men who find themselves in war, who fall in love with war, and who then find the terrible cost of war to their innermost selves.