To Make Men Free - A Novel of the Civil War

In To Try Men's Souls, New York Times bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen cast a new light on the year 1776 and the man who would become the father of our nation, George Washington. Valley Forge picks up the narrative a year after Washington’s triumphant surprise attack on Trenton, and much has changed since then.

It’s the winter of 1777, and Washington’s battered, demoralized army retreats from Philadelphia. Arriving at Valley Forge, they discover that their repeated requests for a stockpile of food, winter clothing, and building tools have been ignored by Congress. With no other options available, the men settle down for a season of agony. For weeks the dwindling army freezes under tents in the bitter cold. Food runs out. Disease festers. The men are on the point of collapse, while in Philadelphia the British, joined by Allen van Dorn, the Loyalist brother of the dead patriot, Jonathan van Dorn, live in luxury.

In spite of the suffering and deceit, Washington endures all, joined at last by a volunteer from Germany, Baron Friederich von Steuben. With precious few supplies and even less time, von Steuben begins the hard task of recasting the army as a professional fighting force capable of facing the British head-on—something it has never accomplished before—and in the process he changing the course of history.   

Valley Forge is a compelling, meticulously researched tour-de-force novel about endurance, survival, transformation, and rebirth. It chronicles the unique crucible of time and place where Washington and his Continental Army, against all odds, were forged into a fighting force that would win a revolution and found the United States of America.

New York Times bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen present the triumphant conclusion to their George Washington series—a novel of leadership, brotherhood, loyalty, and the victory of the American cause.

It is 1781, and Washington and his army have spent three years in a bitter stalemate, engaging in near constant skirmishing against the British.  The enemy position in New York is far too strong, and all approaches covered by the Royal Navy.   At last two crucial reports reach Washington.   The first is that the French have briefly committed a fleet to the American coast to engage the British.  The second is that British General Cornwallis, driven to distraction by the protracted warfare in the Carolinas, has decided to withdraw into Yorktown to establish a new base.  

Washington decides to embark on one of the most audacious moves in American military history.  He will take nearly his entire army out of New Jersey and New York, and force march it more than three hundred miles in complete secrecy.  He must pray that the French navy is successful in blockading Chesapeake Bay, so that he can fall upon Cornwallis, lay siege to him, and capture his entire force.   It is a campaign ladened with “Ifs” but the stalemate must be broken, otherwise the American spirit, after six long years of war, will crumble.

Sergeant Peter Wellsley is tasked with “paving the way” for the rapid movement of the army, and above all else neutralizing any loyalists who might slip off to provide warning. The entire operation is predicated on complete, total surprise, a near-impossible task for an army moving through areas that harbor strong loyalists.  On the other side, Allen Van Dorn, still mourning the loss of his friend Major Andre, receives bits and pieces of reports from civilians that something is afoot across New Jersey and is tasked to find out what.   When one of the former friends is captured, both must decide where their true loyalties lie during the heat of the Battle of Yorktown as Washington’s professional army, once a “rabble in arms,” executes the war’s most decisive contest.

With Victory at Yorktown, critically acclaimed authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have reached the pinnacle of their talents in a tour de force narrative of one of America’s most important heroes.