In epic style, the historical fiction series Prelude to Glory chronicles the miraculous events that gave birth to a new nation. Along with fascinating fictional characters, he provides engaging portraits of such luminaries as George Washington, Nathan Hale, and intrepid John Glover. Through this powerful story, you will come to appreciate the fortitude it took for the Patriots to stand firm and resolute during these times that tried men's souls. In Our Sacred Honor, the first volume in the series, master storyteller Ron Carter presents the early events of the Revolutionary War through the eyes of common people. We meet the heroes, but we see them through the eyes and hearts of the soldiers and the sailors, men and women, who came out of the shops, fields, and forests and paid the price. In the second volume, The Times that Try Men’s Souls, the high price of liberty for which the colonists fought would include great sacrifice and endurance--even in the face of apparent defeat. Focusing primarily on events between June and December 1776, this installment in the series follows Billy Weems (friend of Matthew Dunson from volume 1) to the battlefields in the New York area, where General George Washington commands the Continental army. In the third volume, To Decide Our Destiny, the author focuses on General George Washington as he makes the hard decision to command his struggling and beaten army once more before the soldiers' enlistments expire at the end of the year. In a torrential blizzard on Christmas Day, Washington and his army cross the Delaware River and march into history. In the fourth volume, The Hand of Providence, British General John Burgoyne sets out from Canada with a massive army. Losing the help of his Indian allies and slowed by the nearly impassable terrain, the flamboyant Burgoyne finds himself locked in the battle of his life at a place called Saratoga. There, under the heroic leadership of General Benedict Arnold, the rustic American force claims an unlikely victory, and a turning point is reached in the American Revolution. In the fifth volume, A Cold, Bleak Hill, the Continental Army are pitted against General William Howe and his superbly trained and better provisioned British forces. The inspired Americans make a good showing at the battles of Brandywine Creek and Germantown, but in the end they absorb two disappointing defeats. The atrocities suffered by the Americans in the 'Paoli Massacre' and the political machinations of the ambitious American officers Horatio Gates and Thomas Conway set the stage for the darkest hour of the entire Revolution--the heartbreaking story of Valley Forge. In the sixth volume, The World Turned Upside Down, Great Britain adopts a new strategy in the war to subdue the American rebels. British general Sir Henry Clinton leads British and German forces in an invasion of the South, hoping to use success there as a springboard to subdue the Northern colonies. In the seventh volume, The Impending Storm, The great guns at Yorktown fell silent, British General Cornwallis surrendered, and England conceded the war. For one euphoric moment a shout of jubilation rolled forth in America - and then harsh reality gripped the country. America was thirteen separate countries, each with its own money, political organization, culture, and history. Congress was essentially powerless. Border tariffs sprang up between states, with cannons to enforce them. Quarrels broke out. Banks lacked gold and silver to support their paper currency; bankruptcies raged. The military was paid with unenforceable written promises, and soldiers demanded their wages. Finally, in 1786, still unpaid, the soldiers revolted and Americans killed Americans. The impending storm was threatening to break. In the eighth volume, A More Perfect Union, fifty-five desperate men met in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. For more than four months they sweated in a sealed room and harangued and debated and compromised. The Constitution they produced established a government like none since the dawn of time, and changed the world forever. A More Perfect Union tells the story of that government's creation. In the ninth and final volume, By Dawn’s Early Light, the Americans had stunned the world by winning their independence from the mightiest military power on earth and creating a startling new constitution that vested ultimate power in the common man. No one had anticipated that, by the 1790s, the giants of the world — England, France, Spain, and Russia — would again be caught up in war, with the United States trapped in the middle. British Canada to the north, hostile American Indians to the west, Spain and pirates to the south, and British ships in the Atlantic all loomed menacingly on the new country's horizon. Too soon, the Americans had to stand and fight or accept the role of a weakling in the family of nations.