The Eagles' Lake: Skywaters Book 3

by Francis Smith

By 1759, we had been battling the French for control of North America for a hundred years. I was thirty-nine years old and had been in the fight since I was a lad and only the expulsion of the French from the continent could give me what I wanted, to live in peace in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York.

So spoke Ken Kuyler, Albany-born trapper and scout.

Kuyler has served with two legendary American rangers, Old Joe Blanchard in King George’s War and now in the French and Indian War with Robert Rogers.

This latest war began as a series of skirmishes in the American wilderness and broadened into a world-wide conflict, and for Kuyler’s colonials and their British allies, it has been naught but catastrophic military debacles. Braddock’s defeat at the Monongahela, the brutal losses of Oswego and William Henry, Abercrombie’s monumental blundering at Ticonderoga.

Now, and with British prime minister William Pitt having fixed the North American continent as the key to victory in the wider war, the British-American preponderance in men and munitions is driving the war toward a successful close.

Kuyler can see the fulfillment of his dream, to establish his family at his Adirondack Paradise. What else he can sense, albeit dimly, is how the expulsion of the French will lead to an outcome vastly different from what most men envision. The French presence has always served to mitigate the tensions between the Americans and the British but with the French gone, new tensions arise. The Americans roil with indignation at the high-handedness of the British Parliament and king, the English bristle at American intransigence. Kuyler would stay clear of the troubles but with so many Americans, including his sons, embracing the notion of independence and threatening rebellion against the empire they helped create, how long can he stand aside?

375 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2022