Goodreads asked Larrie D. Ferreiro:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Larrie D. Ferreiro I’m an engineer – specifically a naval architect -- by background. I used to design warships for the US Navy, I worked also on warship design in the French and British navies. I did my PhD in history at Imperial College London on shipbuilding during the age of sail. During my research I learned that after their defeat in the Seven Year’s War, France and Spain had shared shipbuilders and artillery engineers to create a unified navy in order to exact revenge against the British, and that this unified navy was critical to the overall American victory in the Revolutionary War. So when I saw that my children’s schoolbooks barely mentioned the French participation during the American Revolution, and that Spain was completely absent, I began wondering why there was a such a disconnect. Even more modern scholarly works barely mention how closely united France and Spain were during the fight, or how much America relied on their aid to win.

My agent Michelle Tessler thought there was an untold story there. I spent several years dragging my family to dozens of battlefields and encampments, while I pored through archives in the United States and Europe. I was also able to draw on the knowledge of a number of historians in the United States, France and Spain to fill in the blanks.

The result was BROTHERS AT ARMS

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