Fate and Fair Winds

Adventure / Romance: Takes place during the American Revolution beginning in July 1776 The novel explores what it means to be free and independent from both a personal and a political standpoint.
The heroine, Rebecca is searching for personal independence after her father has used her dowry to buy a neighbor's land. He has offered to arrange her marriage to that neighbor as an alternative to having a dowry. This is an option she finds repugnant, but perhaps inevitable. Angry, she walked to the river and sat down to clear her head. Lovely ships, their sails and lines speaking of faraway places, drew her in and let her forget her anger. She started sketching the graceful Queen Bess, a three masted merchantman with a fantastic figurehead. As she finished, a shadow fell over her work. She looked up to see a tall man with ice blue eyes staring over her shoulder. He offered to buy her sketch, and to take her to lunch. Might he also offer something else? A way to captain her own fate - if only in a small private way?

John FitzSimmon, has been traveling from Georgia to Pennsylvania along the coast, studying the mood of the Colonists for his commander Gen. William Howe. He stops in Philadelphia to meet with his brother Jason, the captain of a merchant vessel docked at the harbor. When his shadow falls over the sketch Rebecca has made of the pretty ship, she asks him a question that will change both their lives.

The next in the Edge of Empire Series, Fate and Fair Winds takes place during the British occupation of Philadelphia, fall of 1777 through the spring of 1778, during the American Revolution. I wrote this book as a way to compare the two occupations: Boston, 1774 to 1776 with that of Philadelphia's 1777-1778. Parliament and the Crown had set out to punish Boston for the unruliness of the residents, but the occupation of Philadelphia was for winter quarters and quite different, with dances and parties.
The heroes of the two books are brothers, Jason and John FitzSimmon. They are classic British heroes, sons of the aristocracy, needing to find a way in their lives. They choose to settle in America rather than returning to England.