(fiction) 216 pages, 5 5/8 x 8 1/2", paperbound,
ISBN 1-887478-02-7, $25
Richard Snow, editor of American Heritage magazine, wrote this novel for America's Bicentennial. At the time of its first publication, reviewers compared Freelon Starbird to the Red Badge of Courage.
"Mr. Snow has a remarkable capacity for sharply delineating character,
for telling a story, and for knowing when to stop. This book is a little
gem."
-W. M. Wallace, The New York Times Book Review
My name is Freelon Starbird
I bore arms as a soldier in our great war for independence, and, though I joined the ranks through the worst kind of folly and never went anywhere with the army but I wished I were somewhere else, I now find there are certan things I would like to say about my service. More and more these days I hear brave and nonsensical stories about the American colonies, Thirteen Sisters by the Sea, who slumbered awhile in Liberty's cradle until with fierce and common purpose they rose and girded on armor against the thunderbolts of British tyranny. Men left the plow in the field and the shop untended, banded together, and, when the hirelings of King George came against them, they knelt behind walls and fences and gave them a fine drubbing, as God himself had ordained.
Now, these are splendid stories, but nothing I knew, and they nettle me; for if the American Revolution was so sure to end victorious, then it seems to me that I passed some miserable hours to little purpose. I have begun to worry that, when I and the others who fought in that war are dead and gone, we will be remembered as fortunate men who took part in the grandest, pleasantest pageant in all the world. It was not that, but rather a sort of horrible, sickly task where all went wrong that could go wrong, and any part of a man's body that could pain him did.
I have come to try to write truly of what happened to me and to those with whom I served. And I confide that the events I here chronicle will do the past no more dishonor than the silly tales of British regiments fleeing like rabbits whenever they brushed up against farmers in homespun.