Lydia Bailey - Robrts (1947/1st ed)
HISTORY, romance, and adventure are again skillfully blended by Kenneth Roberts, America's greatest historical novelist. It is i800, and the ideals and promises of the newborn United States are being tested in actual practice. In Boston, the Federalists are jailing those who speak out against them. In the West Indies, French privateers are avenging a broken treaty by capturing American merchant vessels which French courts are condemning and allowing to be sold. In France, Bonaparte is planning the reconquest of Haiti as the base for an attack on continental America. In the Mediterranean, the Barbary States, Tripoli in particular, are blackmailing the United States and seizing American ships. These are "the heroic years" when Albion Hamlin comes from Maine to Boston to defend a client who has run afoul of the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts. Before he knows quite what has happened to him Albion has lost a case, delivered a ringing oration on liberty in the teeth of illiberal justice Chase of the Supreme
Court, and been jailed for his pains. And he has fallen in love—with the Gilbert Stuart portrait of his client's lovely niece, Lydia Bailey, reported dead of yellow fever in Haiti. Albion's escape from prison with the help of old Samuel Adams is but the beginning of the adventures which carry him to Haiti in search of Lydia, and to France and Tripoli, where, with Lydia, he participates in events which, though both shameful and triumphant, taught the world that the United States was a world power at last. In LYDIA BAILEY, as in all his novels. Kenneth Roberts' vigorous, intimate style gives the reader the sense of sharing the lives of his characters and of actually living in their own time. With Albion and Lydia he brings you face to face with handsome Tobias Lear, a political misfit so egregious as to be a national disgrace, and the amazing General Eaton, one of our neglected heroes. You discover why Toussaint L'Ouverture was one of the greatest Negroes who ever lived, and you march with the monstrous
Dessalines, Toussaint's general, whose cruelties were equalled only by his genius. One of your companions will be great-hearted, resourceful King Dick (who appeared briefly in The Lively Lady), black magician, gunner, cavalry leader, and strategist; another will be the protean Eugene Leitensdorfer, General Eaton's adjutant, who spoke seven languages, had been a dervish, Marabout, monk, actor, doctor, restaurateur, prince, and soldier, and knew what to do at any given moment. Lydia Bailey herself emerges as Kenneth Roberts' most superb woman character. Her romance with Albion is the thread which ties together this magnificent historical novel woven by an author who has never failed to present American history more daringly, accurately, unconventionally than any other writer.
Title: Lydia Bailey
Author: Kenneth Roberts
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Publish Date: 1947
Format: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Edition
Condition: Very Good in a Very Good Minus DJ
Pages: 488
Height: 8.6"
Width: 5.8"
Thickness: 1.3"
Cover Price: $3.00 ...
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