A Statue for Jacob
by Peter Murphy
'This debt was not contracted as the price of bread or wine or arms. It was the price of liberty' - Alexander HamiltonKiah Harmon, a young Virginia lawyer, is just emerging from the most traumatic time of her life when actress Samantha ('Sam') van Eyck walks into her office, unannounced, with the case of a lifetime. She asks Kiah to recover a 200-year-old debt from the US Government - a debt that Alexander Hamilton may have acknowledged.The selfless generosity of Sam's ancestor, Jacob Van Eyck, in making a massive loan of gold and supplies at Valley Forge, during the freezing winter of 1777-1778, may well have saved George Washington's army, and the War of Independence, from disaster. But it reduced Jacob to ruin. Despite the government's promises, the debt was never repaid, and this hero of the American Revolution died in poverty, unknown and unrecognised.Two hundred years later, Sam and Kiah embark on a quest to change that. But first,...