I was raised in Greenwich, a colonial New Jersey village still proud of hosting its own revolutionary tea party in the market square. Our neighbors were farmers, trappers, and watermen, and these Delaware Bay traditions sparked my interest in the past and its places. As a historian, I'm particularly interested in the American South during the colonial and revolutionary eras. How people form their culture, build their society, work out what they believe–these are things that fascinate me. My first book is about just such a person, Daniel Morgan of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Morgan was the action hero of the American Revolution. But he was more than that. He was one of those people that America and every society depend upon to build communities, to invest in them, nourish them, help them grow and succeed. How he managed to do that, after starting out as a homeless boy, is a great story, sometimes sad, sometimes inspiring.
