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.