The introduction to my novel Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel. The main character is a British baker in the 1770s who decides join the army and gets caught up in the American Revolution. The book is available at Amazon and other on-line book stores as an e-book or in paper back. Unlike most novels it includes the writer's notes.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

Lexington, Massachusetts

September 2017

 

 

THE SEPTEMBER DAY was sweater-wearing cool when we arrived at the parking lot of the Minute Man National Park in Lexington, Massachusetts. The trees, dressed in red and yellow, held on to most of their leaves. A few had drifted to the ground making tiny patterns of color, reminding me of my childhood autumns.

 

My husband Rick and I had traveled from Europe where we live part time in Southern France and part time in Geneva, Switzerland.

 

Despite being senior citizens, we’re relatively new newlyweds. This was our memory tour. He had shown me where he had grown up in upstate New York. It was my turn to show him my childhood Boston and its surrounding area. I wanted him to see the battlefield where the first battle of the American Revolution had been fought.

 

Bruce Davidson, an artist friend living nearby, joined us. He was a second-generation friend. His father and I had been lunch buddies for years. My love for Bruce only grew that night in Geneva when he called to tell me his dad had died.

 

At the end of the call, I said, “I’m sorry you lost your dad.” His reply was, “I’m sorry you lost your friend.” His empathy when he was suffering reaffirmed what a kind man he is. Time with Bruce, whether in France or New England, is always a gift.

 

A tour bus pulled in and spit out a flock of men and woman in our age group. One woman looked at the green grass through the battlefield leading to the Visitor’s Center and said in a strong southern accent, “I’m not walking that. There’s nothing to see.” I wanted to tell her, “This is where men died so you could have your American country,” but I didn’t.

 

Like other battlefields I’ve visited, including Bull Run and Normandy Beach, Lexington, is peaceful now. The horror of what happened 245 years before has disappeared. To me, the ghosts of those who sacrificed their lives for a cause are still present. There’s everything to see: peace at a price.

 

Rick, Bruce and I walked toward the battlefield. I’d been there several times. When I lived in the area it was a good place to take visiting friends.

 

As always, I stopped at the gravestone of two unknown British soldiers. As always it bothered me. I wondered who they were. Why had they joined the British army? Did their families, if they had any in Britain, know they had died? What was their life like in the army? Were they really devoted to their King?

 

I’d done half-hearted research to find out more about these unknown men, thinking maybe I could create a novel about them. It had never passed the thinking stage.

 

I had learned the general history of the founding of the United States in school from the American point of view. At university, in an English history class with Professor Peter Blewett, a British native, I was given the other side. It was an awakening. However, his two lectures on the subject several decades ago were not enough to create a novel.