A story of America’s War for Independence in the South:
The people who fought and won, and those who fought and lost.
Book One: Escaping Yesterday
Fourteen-year-old Fiona Cassidy from a small village in Northern Ireland is bought an indenture by her father, who hopes she will escape the fate that some young Irish have met: being sent as white slaves to the Caribbean. On the eve of her departure to America, her mystical grandmother reads the tea leaves and foretells of many journeys she will make, not just the one she faces in a long and dangerous sea voyage. Her destination is Charlestown, South Carolina, where she will become a lady’s maid to Beatrice Stainton, wife of an imperious and domineering British major, Nigel Stainton.
Her first journey takes an unexpected route as the ship’s captain is diverted to the west coast of Africa to take on a cargo of slaves. Among those brought on board is a young girl, Aalisyah, who becomes Fiona’s lifelong friend, Alicia. In Charlestown, Fiona is taken by Major Stainton to his plantation, Edgewater, where she meets Beatrice, his wife who suffers not only from his abuse, but who is also physically disabled. Over time, Fiona befriends Beatrice, which leads to a disastrous encounter with the major.
Fiona’s next journey begins when she runs away from the plantation into the mountains of North Carolina with an Indian trader. There she experiences relative peace, living within the culture of the Cherokee people and becoming the wife of the son of the chief. But her peace is short-lived when their village is raided and destroyed by British attacks. She is on the run once again when she is discovered hidden in the forest by Will Gordon.
Book Two: Surviving the Now
Will Gordon, having miraculously survived the bloodbath at the Battle of Culloden in Scotland’s highlands, is rescued and finds refuge on board a ship headed to America. It is an immigrant ship, and its cargo are other Scottish people making their way to the New World, bound for Wilmington, North Carolina.
On board he meets Fergus McKinney, the leader of the group who plan to join a community of Scots already in America. He is enchanted by McKinney’s daughter, Margaret, and when her father invites Will to join them in the small community of Cross Creek, he readily agrees. The McKinneys and others succeed in creating a prosperous farm in the sandy hill country along the Cape Fear River. It is so prosperous that Fergus eventually sells it for a goodly profit, and the family moves north to the Yadkin River, at the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Will and Margaret are married, and eventually have a daughter, Jeannette.
Tragedy strikes when renegade Indians attack, and Will’s world is shattered. He seeks revenge against the Cherokee by joining the forces of General James Grant, whose mission is to destroy as many Cherokee villages as possible. He witnesses the brutality of the British against a much weaker foe, brutality that reminds him of his own losses on Culloden Moor, and he departs, headed back to eastern North Carolina and his daughter, Jeannette. He is startled to encounter a white woman and her children in a remote forest in the mountains. A white woman, with a gun pointed straight at him.
Book Three: Fighting for Tomorrow
Fiona and Will make a life together, and as their children grow into adulthood, the family faces the many outrages perpetrated on settlers by corrupt British officials. Aidan, Fiona’s son, who was raised mostly by his Cherokee family, leaves to become a long-hunter, and heads into the Blue Ridge. There he encounters the fiercely independent Wataugans, among the first pioneers to declare independence from British rule. Aidan, always conflicted about his identity–is he white or Indian?–takes the name Cass, and through his experiences, the reader learns about the complex and sometimes horrifying conflicts involving not only the British, but also the Indians leading up to the war. The story concludes with the Battle of Kings Mountain, a victory Thomas Jefferson described as having “turned the tide of the war.”
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Author’s Note
Immigration and the problems inherent in the process have been part of the history of mankind since the beginning of time: One tribe wants the land of another, and so will take it by force or cunning. Or one tribe builds a wall to keep another tribe from entering its land. Or tribes unite through marriage or treaty only to fall apart again through treachery or betrayal. It is a never-ending saga of humankind.
My quest in writing Freedom’s Edge is not to resolve this eternal issue, but rather through this work of historical fiction provide the reader with insight into the incredible complexities that faced both the immigrants who came into the southern ports of the British colonies in the mid-eighteenth century and the natives already upon these shores. I have tried to remain true to historic dates and figures, but this is fiction, life imagined in a time and place over two and a half centuries ago, and history sometimes gets fuzzy—in my research, I sometimes encountered different versions of events, times, and places. I have chosen the ones that best fit my story.
My “tribes” are primarily the British, Irish, Highland Scots, Africans, and the Cherokee, descendants of all of which can be found in the mountains and valleys of western North and South Carolina and northern Georgia today. Other “contributing tribes” include the French, Moravians, Scots-Irish, Germans, Swiss, and the Catawba, Shawnee and Creek Indians. The mountains and foothills of North and South Carolina became home to a stew of humanity from both sides of the Atlantic and both hemispheres, brought together by hope, despair, fear, greed, desire for power, lust for land, and that ultimate and elusive aspiration, freedom.
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Buy from my local bookseller: Escaping Yesterday, Surviving the Now, Fighting for Tomorrow