Historical Fiction Colonial

Arthur Leary thought that his part in the Revolution ended when his generals surrendered their army to the Americans after the Battle of Saratoga. Little did he know that political maneuvering at the highest levels of British and American government would leave him and his fellow soldiers marching across the landscape for years to come...unless he could find a way out. The rocky soil of a New England farm owned by fierce patriots to the American cause offered him hard labor and harder choices - choices that would shape his future and that of his country.

Seeking a new life, the Oberstrasse family lands on the wild Maine coast in 1753. They find that the American frontier teems with conniving swindlers, hostile French and Indians, killing diseases, and then a powerful movement for independence from Britain. They have come because Christianne has decided that their infant sons will never soldier for the Landgraf of Hesse like their father, hired out to serve King George of England. Expecting to till the soil, Johann finds that opportunity on the rocky coast comes from the forest, not land, so he learns carpentry and trapping.

In 1638, Lady Margaret Brent, a headstrong and subversive Catholic spinster in Protestant England is forced to flee to the New World. Margaret's transition from a privileged life to one of the privations doesn't disturb her as much as other discoveries. Arriving settlers get sick and die, especially women and children. Catholics tolerate discrimination from Protestants, everyone fears Indian raids, and then there are the irrational behaviors of Maryland men. For Maryland to survive, the government must make tough choices. Margaret must ask for the right to vote to save her Maryland.

In 17th-century Dublin, Ireland, preteen Callum McCarthy is shipped to the English Colonies, where he will endure horrors of the Irish slave trade. Intense and powerful, JR Thompson’s Brutalized explores ideas of greed, loneliness and despair, determination, and faith.