1777 - Danbury on Fire!
Description:
AS THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION HEATS UP, THE HAMILTON FAMILY MELTS DOWN!
JOE HAMILTON, 13, JUST WANTS DECENT SHOES, BUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN HIS FATHER AND GRANDFATHER CALL EACH OTHER TRAITORS!
The Hamilton family are Patriot to the bone, except for Joe's pacifist parents. Is this war right or wrong?
Warned not to mix into rebel business, Joe dives headfirst into everyone's business, investigating a war that's barely started and way underfunded. Every Patriot failing revealed by Joe's hero, Lambert Lockwood, sounds like a horrible miscalculation. When Joe's adult cousin says he will hide if the British come, Joe has about had it! Both accident and planning slowly compel Joe to control his own life - and to do his best to manage everyone else's!
Will it be the Liberty Boys' tar and feathers for Joe's father or the British hangman's noose for his Patriot grandfather?
Famous figures abound in this four-day dash from disaster to disaster:
- Gen. William Tryon (star of TV's Outlander series)
- Enoch Crosby (star of James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy
- Gen. Benedict Arnold ('Nuf said!)
This intricate braid of facts brings the reader closer to little-known aspects of the Revolutionary period
- Bounties paid (or not) to lure young boys into soldiery
- The artificer corp hidden in a valley near Danbury
- The Patriot Commissary's tempting stash of guns
- The smallpox threat terrorizing the population into inhuman deeds
Oh, yes the redcoats are coming. They seem nice.
Especially one. Maybe way too nice....
When things get hot, Joe runs home ... the very last place he should be.
If you liked Johnny Tremaine or My Brother Sam is Dead you'll love this book!
Check out the inside flap to meet Joe Hamilton, a boy with some heavy family issues!