Oliver Wiswell by Roberts, Kenneth - 1940

New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc, 1940. 2nd Printing. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 8x5x1. 2nd printing. Lacks jacket. Bookplate of the late John Westerberg (a bookseller who operated as The Yankee Peddler) on front endpaper, front hinge weakening, front and end matter lightly foxed. 1940 Hard Cover. 836 pp. 8vo. Maps on endpapers. The novel begins in April 1775, when the protagonist is ejected from his home by American rebels, and ends in 1783, when the war has ended and he and other Loyalists leave their home country to establish roots in Canada. In between, the author manages to have Oliver plausibly meeting some of the most interesting characters involved (General Howe, John Vardill, John Cruger, etc) and at the scene of many of the war's most interesting events (the Battle of Bunker (Breed's) Hill, the rebels' surrender of New York, the intrigue-ridden courts of Paris and London, the trek to Kentucky by fleeing Tories along Boone's Wilderness Trail, the siege of Ninety Six and Benedict Arnold's campaign in the south, and the Loyalists' post-war settlement in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Gibralter, Bermuda and the Bahamas). Furthermore, we become involved in the personal lives of several main characters: the young Mr. Wiswell, his resourceful and loyal friend Tom Buell, Sally Leighton -- the rebel girl Oliver leaves behind, and the irascible Mrs. Belcher Byles. In the course of the novel we come to have genuine affection for these characters.