Like every author, I stand on the shoulders of those who have preceded me. I could not have written this book without the assistance of a great many others, and an abbreviated list appears below. Two, however, were truly stars to navigate by: 1759 The Battle for Canada by Laurier L. Lapierre, McClelland & Stewart, Inc., which provided a wealth of insight and information about Québec of the time, including the story of a secret Jesuit map of La Traverse in the hands of and ignored by the great Montcalm; and Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 by Fred Anderson, Knopf, which introduced me to the tale of Washington in Jumonville’s Glen and which brilliantly told the war’s story from the other side of the border. Others were The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 by Richard White, Cambridge University Press; Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America by Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Cornell University Press; Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier by James H. Merrell, W.W. Norton & Company (where I learned about bridge persons); Montcalm and Wolfe: The French and Indian War by Francis Parkman, DeCapo Press; A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War by Fred Anderson, University of North Carolina Press, Empire of the Bay: The Company of Adventurers That Seized a Continent by Peter C. Newman, Penguin USA; A Few Acres of Snow: The Saga of the French and Indian Wars by Robert Leckie, John Wiley & Sons; The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes: As Described by Nicolas Perrot, French Commandant in the Northwest, University of Nebraska Press; Redcoats Along the Hudson: The Struggle for North America 1754-63 by Noel St. John Williams, Brassey’s, Inc.; The Founders of America: How Indians Discovered the Land, Pioneered in It, and Created Great Civilizations by Francis Jennings, W. W. Norton; The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization: British Military Sites from Albany to Crown Point by Daniel K. Richter, University of North Carolina Press; The Great Warpath by David R. Starbuck, University Press of New England; Redcoats, Yankees and Allies: A History of Uniforms by Brenton C. Kemmer, illustrated by Joe Lee, Heritage Books; Sons of a Trackless Forest by Mark A. Baker, Baker’s Trace Publishing. (Mark Baker is the re-enactor and student of the period who taught Daniel Day-Lewis how to fire a long gun for the Twentieth Century Fox film, Last of the Mohicans.)
The Internet was an indispensable resource. I found there dictionaries of Native American languages, reproductions of maps and documents, the wisdom of the nation’s many re-enactors of the colonial period (surely one of the great underutilized resources for those seeking authenticity in historical film and fiction), histories of numerous Native American tribes, and countless accounts of the time of the story without which the world within these pages could not have come into being. It would be impossible to list every website I visited, many over and over again, but anyone interested in retracing this path need only put subject headings and keywords into the major search engines and follow the links. Bravo.
Finally, in keeping with the biblical promise that the last shall be first, warmest thanks to my agents, Henry Morrison and Danny Baror, my superb editor, Sydny Miner—who once again has given me back a better book than I gave her—and a special note of thanks to Andrée Pagès for that rarest of treasures, sensitive and enlightening copyediting.
I am indebted to you all.
About the Author
Beverly Swerling is the author of the critically acclaimed City of Dreams. A writer, consultant, and an avid amateur historian, she lives in New York City with her husband.
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