The ability to imagine is a wonderful gift from God; before television, it was how everyone relived the adventures of the real-life heroes of history. It can still be done, whenever you read a book.
In this book, you can stand on the deck of the Santa Maria alongside Christopher Columbus, sailing farther and farther westward, going boldly where no man had ever gone before.
A century (and a few pages) later, you can journey with the great explorer-missionaries who opened vast reaches of the Southwest and the wilderness north of the Great Lakes. With Father Jacques Marquette, you can paddle down the mighty river that divides this continent, the one Native Americans called the Mississippi.
You can join the Pilgrims as they start their little colony in Plymouth and celebrate the first Thanksgiving in the New World with the Wampanoag tribe.
From the colony of Georgia to the colony of Massachusetts, you can ride on horseback with George Whitefield, the first evangelist to come to America. As he preaches, you can see whole towns become excited about living for God.
You can share the growing concern of the colonists as King George of England taxes them unfairly and punishes them if they object. And you can decide if you would have remained loyal to England or joined the Patriots in their struggle to keep the freedom that their ancestors had known for 150 years.
In July 1776, you can be present in Philadelphia for the great debate that resulted in America’s Declaration of Independence.
On Brooklyn Heights, you can wait in the trenches with the other Patriots, surrounded and outnumbered by the British—and then see the extraordinary fog that came and stayed, enabling you and the entire American army to escape to Manhattan. Even the British acknowledged the importance of that fog, which many Americans called a miracle.
In the cold winter of 1777–78 in Valley Forge, you can discover General Washington, alone and kneeling in the snow, praying.
You can return to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in 1787, where once again the future of our country is at stake. Now the new States’ delegates are trying to agree on the form our government will take. But there is much more arguing than agreeing, until Benjamin Franklin gets to his feet. He reminds them that when they were up against the mightiest military power on earth, the only thing that saved them was reliance on God.
In this revised and expanded edition of the book there are even more adventures awaiting you than there were in the first edition. Now you can also come to North Carolina with John White as he searches for the Lost Colony of Roanoke; you can stand with the Patriots in Boston and watch the “Indians” throw the tea into Boston Harbor; you can listen with the other Virginia delegates to Patrick Henry’s powerful “Give me liberty or give me death” speech; you can ride with Caesar Rodney as he pushes through the thunder, lightning, and rain to cast the decisive vote that gave us the Declaration of Independence; and you can stand with Daniel Morgan’s Continental army on the banks of the Yadkin River and watch the rising water prevent Lord Cornwallis’s British army from pursuing and destroying them.
This book is full of heroes—real men and women who were not afraid to share their faith and let it guide them in all the things they did. It made the difference in their personal lives—just as it can in yours. Let their example inspire you to make sure our nation stays on course!
Peter Marshall
David Manuel