Power And Tender

With his beribboned uniform, brass buttons, sleeve bands and gold embroidered hat, his uncle was a daring revelation to Ben. 

His sea stories spoke of people afar and showed young Ben something the boy did not know about himself. Ben’s heart began to sing. 

“I want to be a pilot like you when 

I grow up.” 


By 1920 Ben Alton was a supreme boatman of Virginia, but he still dreamed of becoming a coastal pilot. He knew that his own lineage through the preceding centuries narrowed his 

chances, though. Pilot appointments went to the sons of pilots, men who had never stooped their backs to scratch out a living in the soil. When Ben qualified to apply for a federal appointment, he was ecstatic, and he scored perfectly on the theory examination. When he was disqualified on the physical, Ben was devastated. Fate had made the choice 

between the sea and the soil for him.

 

The United States had lived in its own world for more than a century after the Revolution, but in the year 1910 the Panama Canal opened the floodgates of international trade rights for foreign competition in armament and commerce. Political polices changed and corporations, not agriculture, began to be favored. A financial 

and cultural decline began for grass roots agronomy. Power And Tender is authentic historical fiction at its best as veteran author Margret Russell tells of one man’s journey through the turbulent era that set the stage for a society that today has shifted so dramatically from its agricultural roots in the nineteenth century.