What could be a more exciting year to start a career as a printer's apprentice than 1775? Young Tom Cartwright came out of Frederick County, Virginia, with very little equipment—other than a couple of hard fists and a pair of alert, inquisitive eyes. As apprentice to Alexander Purdy, printer and publisher of the Virginia Gazette, he found Williamsburg boiling with adventure. There was the mystery of "Mr. Valentine" and Tom's vanished purse; the breath-taking political events of a dynamite-charged period; and the challenge of learning to "twist the devil's tail," the long wooden handle of the printing press.

Such dynamic figures as Patrick Henry and the whole gay, stirring life of eighteenth-century Williamsburg spring vividly to life in this story of a young patriot, climaxed by the thrilling moment when, all alone, he sets the type for the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence.

From the dust jacket