Citizen Washington

A Novel

By: William Martin

Narrated by: John Pruden

Length: 20 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

He became the nation's first hero.... But before that, George Washington was just a man. And in his youth, he was a man on the make. He wanted to serve the king, so he donned a red coat and fought the French. He loved another man's wife but yearned for status, so he married a rich widow. He dreamed of wealth, so he accumulated land and slaves. He accumulated enemies, too....

In Citizen Washington, one of those enemies - a newspaper publisher named Hesperus Draper - learns that Martha Washington has burned her husband's letters at his death. So Draper sets his nephew on a quest to find the truth about the letters and about the man himself. The younger Draper meets a dozen people, from Mount Vernon slaves and Iroquois Indians to Jefferson and Adams and the other giants of the era, and they tell their own stories as they tell Washington's: from his callow youth, through the harrowing battles of the Revolution, to the first American presidency.

What emerges is a remarkable, multi-faceted portrait of a society reeling toward rebellion, a nation rushing to be born, and a man rising to greatness.

©1999 William Martin (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Interesting story

I have an interest in all things revolutionary, so this book would interest me. I liked it but the narrative advanced by small vignettes told by the people in Washington's life. That would've been fine but the segments were often very short so sometimes I lost track of who was speaking. It would've liked it more if the segments had been longer.