The End of the Tether 12+

📓 It is 1781, and the war for American independence is in its sixth bloody year. In Virginia, the patriot forces of the Marquis de Lafayette meet the army of British general Lord Charles Cornwallis near Green Spring Farm. On one side of the field are two brothers from Massachusetts, Daniel and Joshua Brattle. On the other side is Sergeant Tom Martin of the British 1st Light Infantry. Each is confident of victory, but it is Cornwallis who prevails, sending Lafayette’s army reeling back in defeat.Joshua Brattle is wounded, and Daniel takes him to a farmhouse where he meets Catherine Seawell and her younger sister Abigail. The women agree to help Daniel care for his injured brother. Cornwallis marches to the tobacco port of Yorktown, which he fortifies as a naval base on the orders of his superior, Sir Henry Clinton. Cornwallis worries that the war can no longer be won. Meanwhile General George Washington knows he needs to win a key victory before the winter of 1782. He conceives a complicated plan to trap Cornwallis in Yorktown by both sea and land, and so force his surrender.With the defeat at Green Spring, Daniel no longer believes independence possible. He and Catherine, who opposes the war, grow closer over the course of Joshua’s long recovery. It is only at Joshua’s urging that Daniel agrees to return to the Continental Army.Catherine is reunited with her missing cousin John Chester, who has joined the cavalry of Tarleton’s British Legion. John takes the sisters to Yorktown....