The Whiskey Rebels
by Liss, David
- New
- Paperback
- first
- Condition
- New/No Jacket
- ISBN 10
- 0812974530
- ISBN 13
- 9780812974539
- Seller
-
Virden, Illinois, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
David Liss's bestselling historical thrillers, including A Conspiracy of Paper and The Coffee Trader, have been called remarkable and rousing: the perfect combination of scrupulous research and breathless excitement. Now Liss delivers his best novel yet in an entirely new setting--America in the years after the Revolution, an unstable nation where desperate schemers vie for wealth, power, and a chance to shape a country's destiny.Ethan Saunders, once among General Washington's most valued spies, now lives in disgrace, haunting the taverns of Philadelphia. An accusation of treason has long since cost him his reputation and his beloved fiancee, Cynthia Pearson, but at his most desperate moment he is recruited for an unlikely task--finding Cynthia's missing husband. To help her, Saunders must serve his old enemy, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who is engaged in a bitter power struggle with political rival Thomas Jefferson over the fragile young nation's first real financial institution: the Bank of the United States.Meanwhile, Joan Maycott is a young woman married to another Revolutionary War veteran. With the new states unable to support their ex-soldiers, the Maycotts make a desperate gamble: trade the chance of future payment for the hope of a better life on the western Pennsylvania frontier. There, amid hardship and deprivation, they find unlikely friendship and a chance for prosperity with a new method of distilling whiskey. But on an isolated frontier, whiskey is more than a drink; it is currency and power, and the Maycotts' success attracts the brutal attention of men in Hamilton's orbit, men who threaten to destroy all Joan holds dear.As their causes intertwine, Joan and Saunders--both patriots in their own way--find themselves on opposing sides of a daring scheme that will forever change their lives and their new country. The Whiskey Rebels is a superb rendering of a perilous age and a nation nearly torn apart--and David Liss's most powerful novel yet.From the Hardcover edition.
Reviews
David Liss's 2008 historical novel THE WHISKEY REBELS weaves together three events in the early American Republic. These are the chartering of the first Bank of the United States in 1791, the financial panic of 1792 and the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Widowed Joan Maycott, who wishes to write the first great American novel, believes that by persuading Congress to impose an excise tax on the making of whiskey, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton is responsible for the violent death near Pittsburgh of her whiskey distilling husband, Andrew. Step by step the handsome, brilliant Joan wins allies and builds a network of whiskey boys to do her bidding with an eye to toppling Hamilton and making themselves rich. ***
The second major fictional player in THE WHISKEY REBELS is Ethan Saunders, a onetime star in George Washington's Revolutionary War spy network. Ten years earlier, just before Yorktown, Saunders was asked by Colonel Alexander Hamilton to resign from the Continental army under suspicion of selling minor secrets to the British (a charge eventually proven false). From initial hater of Hamilton, Saunders slowly comes to admire and defend him. This puts him on a collision course with the conspirators around Mrs Maycott, though it is years before they discover each other and she tries to make him a pawn in her schemes to ruin Hamilton. ***
I will not spill many more words on a book far too long and tedious. The historical underpinnings are too undramatic and technical (6% bonds, 4% bonds, the usual greed and fear of stock markets, political jockeying by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, etc., etc.) to justify the ungainly, rambling narrative structure. As a morality tale THE WHISKEY REBELS is not without attraction. Its thesis is that civilization is a very thin veneer. Transport well read, Christian men and women to a frontier wilderness (in this case the environs of Pittsburgh) and they will become nasty, unkempt, murderous and self-absorbed. David Liss provides some good local color in the lovingly recreated taverns of late 18th Century Philadelphia and New York. Otherwise, forget this book. -OOO-
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- The Sly Fox (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 008564
- Title
- The Whiskey Rebels
- Author
- Liss, David
- Format/Binding
- Trade Paperback
- Book Condition
- New New
- Jacket Condition
- No Jacket
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st U.S. Trade Paperback Edition, 4th P
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 0812974530
- ISBN 13
- 9780812974539
- Publisher
- Ballantine Books
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2009
- Size
- 8vo - over 7¾" - 9&f
- Keywords
- BRAND NEW
Terms of Sale
The Sly Fox
About the Seller
The Sly Fox
About The Sly Fox
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Remainder
- Book(s) which are sold at a very deep discount to alleviate publisher overstock. Often, though not always, they have a remainder...
- Trade Paperback
- Used to indicate any paperback book that is larger than a mass-market paperback and is often more similar in size to a hardcover...