Audio preview of Guns of Providence--now available

GUNS OF PROVIDENCE the third and last book in the FAITH & FREEDOM TRILOGY, is in the publication process, scheduled to release, June, 2010. Listen to a new audio excerpt at www.douglasbond.webs.com. Entangled in War for Independence Colonial America, the protagonist Sandy M'Kethe, great-grandson of Duncan and Angus's father of the same name in the CROWN & COVENANT TRILOGY, must sort through the labyrinth of loyalties assaulting his faith and arrayed against his very life.

"Like G.A. Henty in an earlier era, Douglas Bond offers a ringside seat on the War for Independence. Bond is a historian with unusual insight, tracing a Scottish Covenanter immigrant family and revealing the truly British origins of the American Revolution."

Russ Pulliam, Indianapolis Star

Why Guns of Providence?

USS PROVIDENCE, 12-gun sloop featured in my new book (to release June, 2010). Below is an excerpt from the timeline in the appendix:

1775 June 15, George Washington named commander-in-chief of Continental Army
1775 June 17, Bunker Hill
1775 August 23, George III refuses to read the Olive Branch Petition and declared the colonies to be in rebellion
1775 October 13, Continental Congress establishes Continental Navy, with Esek Hopkins as first commodore
1776 January 15, Common Sense, by Thomas Paine
1776 May 10, John Paul Jones given command of 12-gun sloop, Providence
1776 July 4, Declaration of Independence
1776 William Howe, commander-in-chief of British Navy, takes New York and Rhode Island
1776 September 22, Nathan Hale executed as a spy. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” he said, quoting Joseph Addison
1776 Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
1776 Edward Bancroft, inventor of invisible ink, spies on Benjamin Franklin in Paris
1776 December 25, Washington’s victory at Trenton, New Jersey
1777 January 3, Washington’s victory at Princeton, New Jersey
1777 June 14, Continental Congress adopts Stars and Stripes as American flag...

New Faith & Freedom Trilogy book underway

I've been a bit distracted, to say the least, with final preparations for the John Calvin 2009 500th birthday tour, so I'm a bit behind getting a full head of writing steam on the new Guns book, likely Guns of Freedom (or Liberty). But I plan to offer updates on this blog site throughout the writing, which will begin in earnest after July 14 when we return from the Calvin tour.

The setting is going to be Maine (part of Massachusetts then), in 1779. The lesser-known Siege of Penobscot will be the culminating military conflict of the story, which has both an infantry militia dimension and a privateer sea battle dimension, both of which I find fascinating to write about.

Guns of Freedom (a working title that is growing on me) will go deep on the divergent positions taken by Christian loyalists and patriots towards the American War for Independence, and the postures toward the war taken by British Christians, especially Presbyterian Scots, but will include contemporaries like poet William Cowper and his friend John Newton (Olney Hymns, incidentally, was published in 1779). Timothy Dwight, author of the hymn, I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord, minuteman chaplain, president of Yale, and grandson of Jonathan Edwards, will likely play a not insignificant role.

This book has a special dimension. Much of my research up to this point has been carried out, with my direction, by my teacher's assistant, Landon O'Ban, salutatorian graduate of the class of 2009, Covenant High School. Laddie has an appointment to West Point where he will be training for the next four years to be a leader of men as an officer in the United States Army.