Bone Rattler #4
Counterpoint
March 2016
On Sale: March 15, 2016
Featuring: Duncan McCallum
ISBN: 1619026155 EAN: 9781619026155 Kindle: B01C6D0KLM Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
The fourth entry in the Bone Rattler series moves ever
closer to the beginning of the American Revolution and
advances the protagonist Duncan McCallum to 1765 and into
the throes of the Stamp Tax dissent, which marked the
beginning of organized resistance to English rule. As the
story unfolds, Duncan is drawn into the mystery of
ritualistic murders that are strangely connected to both the
theft of an Iroquois artifact and an additional series of
murders and kidnappings connecting to the network of secret
runners supporting the nascent committees of
correspondence—which are engaged in the first organized
political dissent across colonial borders. In following the
trail he encounters a powerful conspiracy of highly placed
English aristocrats who are bent on crushing all dissent.
Duncan is captured by its agents, and sent into slavery in
Virginia beside the kidnapped runners. Inspired by an aged
native American slave and new African friends Duncan decides
not just to escape but to turn their own intrigue against
the London lords.
Included in the novel's cast of characters are figures from
our history who have their own destinies to fulfill in the
next decade, including Benjamin Franklin (writing from
London), Samuel Adams, the early Pennsylvania rebel James
Smith, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and, very briefly, a soft spoken
militia officer named Washington. The Blood of the Oak takes
a fresh view on the birth of the new American nation,
suggesting that the "freedom" that became the centerpiece of
the Revolution was uniquely American, rising not just from
unprecedented political discourse but also from the
extraordinary bond with the natural world experienced by
frontier settlers and native tribes.