Despite the revolutionary fervor sweeping the colonies in 1775, 13-year old Sam Nevens has no desire to fight. Outwardly, he is skeptical that the rebels can win. Deep within, he doubts his own bravery. Even after his best friend, Eamon, leaves to join a militia, Sam remains undecided about the war. But after being caught hiding his father's lumber from British ship agents, Sam awakes on a prison ship. Trying to make his way home, Sam is instead drawn closer and closer to the Revolution and its leaders, including Paul Revere, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington.

Author/illustrator Sam Manning has brought to life a period in history which makes this book valuable, but not simply because you will understand how the shipbuilding industry worked from the 1600s?1800s. Manning shows what governments were doing, why, and how it directly parallels the twentieth- and twenty-first century policies of nations to spend blood and treasure to ensure they can control the supply of natural resources for their national security. With 1600s Europe unable to supply the big tall masts needed for their navies, Great Britain established a policy of marking trees in New England which were specifically the Crown's, to be cut, processed, and shipped back to England. Without proper masts, the navy could not carry sails to propel their ships'much like the need for oil today.

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In England's New Forest on the second day of August, 1100, eighteen-year-old Simon Foldre, delighted to be allowed to participate in a royal hunt as squire to the Anglo-Norman nobleman Walter Tirel, finds his future irrevocably altered when, during the hunt, he witnesses the possible murder of King William II.