Author’s Note
Our history books too often create the impression that American independence was abruptly born with the c***k of a Lexington musket in April 1775. Their truncated perspective suggests that colonists woke up one morning and decided to cast off the yoke of oppression, launching a new nation. The truth is that the United States rose out of a long, deeply complex struggle featuring a stunningly diverse cast of characters who gradually recognized they had become something other than European. It may have been geographic quests that brought Europeans to America but it was thousands of journeys of self-discovery in the 17th and 18th centuries that gave rise to our country.
These are the journeys I seek to reflect in the chronicles of Duncan McCallum, the tragic, exhilarating, joyf
