The year is 1758, and though the locale is workaday New York, the landscape is wildly exotic. Our fresh-faced hero is Thomas Dordrecht, raised on a remote farm—now in the heart of modern Brooklyn—speaking both Dutch and English. Though he thinks himself unusually worldly, he has no idea what he’ll face when he agrees to defend the claims of King George II in the brutal French and Indian War. In six exciting months, he gains a lifetime’s education not only in honor, courage, and tenacity, but in rashness, cowardice, falsehood … and murder! An Act of War! Ten months after the humiliating defeat and terrifying massacre at Fort William Henry—famously recounted in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans—the fierce, blood-soaked conflict still rages throughout North America. Seven soldiers of DeLancey’s New York regiment went foraging, but only six returned. The missing man was found with an arrow in his belly, scalped! Everyone had dismissed the warning that enemy Indians were prowling the vicinity—even the victim’s best friend….
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