Saving Washington

Book excerpt: Two young men enlist in the Maryland Militia during the Revolutionary War in this action-packed tale based on the lost story of “America’s 400 Spartans.” On a marshy Brooklyn battlefield on August 27, 1776, four hundred men from Baltimore, Maryland assembled to do battle against a vastly superior British army. Seemingly overnight, these young soldiers had matured from naïve teenagers to perhaps the most important, yet most forgotten, citizen soldiers in all of American history: “America’s 400 Spartans.” Saving Washington follows young Joshua Bolton and his childhood friend Ben Wright, a freed Black man, as they witness British tyranny firsthand, become enraptured by the cause, and ultimately enlist to defend their new nation in a battle that galvanized the American nation on the eve of its birth. Chris Formant’s gripping tale blends real-life historical figures and events with richly developed fictional characters in a multi-dimensional world of intrigue, romance, comradeship, and sacrifice, transporting us two-and-a-half centuries back in time to the bustling streets of Baltimore and the bloody, smoke-filled carnage of battle in Brooklyn. Praise for Saving Washington “An extraordinary and riveting read from cover to cover, Saving Washington is a skillfully crafted and original novel by an author with a distinctive and thoroughly engaging narrative storytelling style.” —Midwest Book Review “Meticulously researched. . . . This is among the finest period pieces ever to chronicle the events that gave birth to American independence. A pitch-perfect study of the grit that defined a fledgling America and a historical thriller extraordinaire.” —BookTrib