Bank Square Books presents an author talk and signing with Brian Carso for the book Gideon's Revolution.
About the Book
About the BookIt's 1780, days after Benedict Arnold flees to the British when his treasonous plot to surrender the American fort at West Point is discovered and Gideon's Revolution is about to begin. General George Washington orders a secret mission for two Continental Army soldiers to go behind enemy lines, abduct Arnold, and return him to his countrymen to be tried and hanged.
Washington selects one of the soldiers, Gideon Wheatley, for the mission because Arnold would trust him. Wheatley fought under Arnold's command at Saratoga and tended to the gravely wounded general for several months at Albany's military hospital. After feigning desertion to the British Army to join Arnold's corps of loyalists, Wheatley and his comrade John Champe seek out Washington's spies in New York and develop a plan to seize the traitor. But when the abduction is foiled, the soldiers are trapped by their own deceit and forced to fight alongside Arnold's raiding army, as if they were traitors themselves.
Years after the war, pressed by memories that haunt him and seeking redemption, Wheatley must decide whether he alone can exact revenge on his former friend and commander, a decision that sends him across the Atlantic to London to find and confront Arnold.
Gideon's Revolution is an American origin story based on real historical events, an odyssey that reveals the profound human tensions between loyalty and betrayal, allegiance and treason, revenge and the possibility of forgiveness.
About the Author
As both a lawyer and a historian, Brian Carso has been studying the American Revolution and the life of Benedict Arnold for three decades. While writing a non-fiction book—a history of treason in the early United States—he came across a little-known plot conceived by George Washington to launch a spy mission to capture Arnold, put him on trial, and hang him from the gallows. He made a note to come back to it someday.
Eventually he did, and decided to tell the story in a novel, as historical fiction. After all, he explains, our knowledge of the plot is limited: it was shrouded in the utmost secrecy, and its players were spies. But we know some of the story and can piece together the details. The rest we can imagine.
The novel, Gideon’s Revolution, is an American origin story, a suspenseful and fast-paced odyssey about loyalty and betrayal, soldiers and spies, heroes and traitors. It's a novel about the past that's right for today.
It's 1780, days after Benedict Arnold flees to the British when his treasonous plot to surrender the American fort at West Point is discovered and Gideon's Revolution is about to begin. General George Washington orders a secret mission for two Continental Army soldiers to go behind enemy lines, abduct Arnold, and return him to his countrymen to be tried and hanged.