The Lady Hermes

It's strange that two biographies I wrote on two people who are American founding fathers, each in his own way, would appear in the same year, same month, by the same publisher. 

BIG GEORGE was to be published in fall of 2008 by Harcourt.  OPEN THE DOOR TO LIBERTY was to be published in January 2009, in time for Black History Month.  But because of the bizarre condition lately of book publishing Harcourt ended up being acquired by Houghton and the two became one.  I had a long history with Harcourt, and none with Houghton.

Everyone knows who George Washington is, but few people recognize the name of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the father of his country. There were three great revolutions in the 18th century, and each one impacted world history. The American Revolution, The French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution. 

Some books take a mighty long time between the flash of an idea and the finished book.  If I count the first moment of the idea, ”Big George” (January 1, 2009, Harcourt/Houghton) has been 10 years in the coming.  Or more.

I live in Revolutionary War country, and one day I offered to take my grandson, Nigel, who was five or six at the time, to a house George Washington may or may not have stopped in – or at least one General Israel Putnam, our local hero, had.  He told me he wasn’t interested in things “ancient like George Washington,” adding that I probably was because I was so ancient.  I didn’t dare admit to him that I never had been very interested in George Washington myself.  As far as I knew, there was nothing to know about him except that he was “The Father of Our Country” and the face on the dollar bill.  He simply WAS and that was enough.  That day I began reading up on him.

To find out about the remarkable and surprising man I discovered, you’ll have to read “Big George; How a Shy Boy Became President Washington.”  The story took seven years from the first words typed by me to being the handsome book illustrated by Matt Phelan and published January 1, 2009.