River of Triumph

River of Triumph This is the tale of America’s founding as a nation against incredible odds. Clashes among rebels, Tories, and redcoats resound in vivid battles and on daring covert missions in the Hudson Valley and along Long Island Sound. Geographically paralleling the historical narrative, a contemporary murder mystery unfolds through a revelation of clues tied to the past. Beginning in 1768, River of Triumph chronicles the adventures of an American Indian, Swift Fox or Luke Davidson, from his tribal village in up-state New York, through his student days at Yale, medical training in Europe, and his return to the Mid-Hudson Valley to practice medicine. After the British reoccupy Manhattan in 1776, he trains as a rebel militia officer. Later, drawn more intimately into the patriot fold by old school ties, Dr. Davidson spies in Westchester County while becoming a major player in the geo-military chess match where General Washington outfoxes his British counterpart, Sir Henry Clinton, at almost every turn. Across this historical stage stride a host of real characters like George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold, Nathan Hale, Sir Henry Clinton, and others whose descriptions have the precise underpinnings of extensive biographical research. In these pages Washington’s portrait will surely astonish—not the truth-telling austere figure of legend but rather a decisive leader capable of deception, scheming and strong emotion, all for his nation’s defense. Innocent and talented, Hale appears in his student days at Yale and as an eager young officer before his fateful trip and capture. After his hanging, his memory sporadically haunts and prods Washington and his fellow college-mates, now American spies and officers too. In the present, a wealthy contractor, Brad McLain, unearths a 200 year old skeleton from beneath a golf course with a knife sticking in its ribs. Obsessed to the point of total insensitivity, Brad disrupts his family and business to find out the identities of the victim and murderer. In retracing the past’s footprints, he meticulously searches historical records throughout the U.S. and employs an array of modern technological measures, including a forensic analysis of the skeleton. Despite all the dead-ends and set-backs, his efforts at last expose the mystery and then some. .