Rebel's Roost is a book for young and old alike that recaptures the human spirit of Old Williamsburg in those stirring times when ideals of individual liberty and national union were struggling to be born.

In Rebel's Roost the reader goes with young Washington into the wild Ohio country and sees the future statesman emerge during this trial by wilderness. The reader meets Tom Jefferson as a student at William and Mary, and understands how, under the influence of such patriots as George Wythe, this lanky, red-headed youth grew in mind and heart and vision. Along Duke of Gloucester Street on a drowsy May morning the reader watches Patrick Henry ride a lean sorrel horse, and senses that a new kind of American leader has come from the hills of upcountry Virginia.

Thus step by step in these pages the story of Old Williamsburg unfolds—in terms of the men who are now remembered giants in our history, and also in terms of other men and women who today are often forgotten heroes in the achievement of American liberty. Yet it was largely because George Mason gasped what America must mean to all its citizens that he became the architect of American democracy. And, finally, a beloved leader who has grasped the same wisdom, Washington stands on the field at Yorktown.

In essence Rebel's Roost is a story of discovery, for where these events end your heritage as an American begins.

From the dust jacket