To Try Men’s Souls

In December 1776, the American Revolution is close to collapse. George Washington’s army has been driven across New Jersey, enlistments are expiring and desertion is increasing. With little room left for retreat, Washington prepares the night crossing of the Delaware and the surprise attack on Trenton. The story also follows Thomas Paine and Jonathan Van Dorn, a fictional private whose divided family makes the war intensely personal.

The novel presents the Trenton campaign as both a military gamble and a crisis of belief. Washington must keep an exhausted army together, Paine struggles to give the cause words powerful enough to sustain it, and ordinary soldiers confront cold, hunger and uncertain loyalty. Their converging stories recreate the moment when a single victory helped restore confidence in an independence movement that had seemed on the verge of failure.