Author Description

The decades leading up to the American Revolution were as tumultuous and chaotic as any in history. As the powerful European nation-states convulsed, the New World exploded with opportunity and renewal that the world had never seen before. At stake was the shifting power structure absorbing every major player including the two most powerful nations on the planet, France and England. Before the climatic events of the American Revolution, which would forever change the course of human history, events would occur that would cause the great revolution to take shape. Many of those world-altering events happened in the most unlikely of places, the wilderness frontier known in the New World as the Ohio Country. America at the Abyss continues the tale of the fictional family of Ben Cushman, a Virginia militiaman whose close friendship with Thomas Jefferson continues to place the Cushman family at the forefront of world-changing events. In America at the Abyss, the readers are launched back into history to see exactly how Ben Cushman and his brother James became such skilled warriors. An exciting flashback places Ben’s father, Ben Senior, with a young George Washington as they attempt to build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio River and secure the gates to the Ohio Country. Washington and Cushman get off to a rocky start, but after a life-saving rescue, the two men become fast friends and rely on each other to survive the beautiful, but dangerous frontier wilderness. As the colonial governors look to expand their holdings beyond the Allegheny Mountains, they run into equally aggressive French Canadians building fort after fort from Lake Erie down to the Forks of the Ohio. Combined with the six large Indian tribes loosely represented as the Iroquois Nation, the sparks soon fly between the centuries-old European rivals and the native Indians in the desperate desire to control the lush, fertile lands of the Ohio. Washington and Cushman Sr. lead their V