The Continental Line

About the Book

Young Richard Larkin had cramed a lot of living into his 25 years even before he came to the American Colonies in 1763. He had been a captain of a troop of cavalry fighting against the French, had been captured by Portuguese pirates, shipwrecked, rescued by Chinese pirates and ultimately ended up as a slave to a Chinese warlord. Saving the life of the warlord from assasination, Larkin wins his freedom and a fortune in gold, but is left with an abiding hatred of slavery that will cause him to fight against it his entire life and will bring him much trouble in America. In Macao, planning to return to England a rich man, he learns that his father and brother have been murdered and his estates and titles usurped by a powerful cousin who is close to the King. To return to England would mean his fortune would be siezed and he imprisoned or killed. Instead he buys a ship and heads for Virginia. In Virginia he encounters old enemies and makes some new ones, including a slaver named Slade, and Captain Garth, aide to the Governor of the colony and a long-time friend of Richard’s cousin, Lord Dandridge. Determined to create his own empire in the wild lands of western Virginia, and later Kentucy, he recruits and leads a party of settlers to build a fort in the wilderness. With his two closest friends, his old commanding office Major Sean McTeague, and Samson Moss, a black man from the Bahamas who has lived among the Indians and knows the wilderness, he pits his life and his fortune against the odds. Larkin becomes very involved in the Colonies dispute with England, and meets many of the movers and shapers of the American Revolution. Colonel George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John and Sam Adams, Benedict Arnold and many others become his close friends and sometimes co-conspirators. In the wilderness he befriends Daniel Boone, James Harrod, George Rogers Clark and other famous frontiersmen, and becomes close to some Indian tribes while fighting a constant and vicious war with the Shawnee. From a slaver he rescues, and fall wildly in love with, a mysterious and exciting black girl, Kaya, from Jamaica, and fights to build a life for himself and his friends where neither the Shawnee nor the King of England can bother them. For nearly four years the love affair with Kaya continues, until the realities of eighteenth century America force an end to it and she marries his close friend, Samson. When the revolution comes Larkin is one of the first to the defense of America. Raising a militia of several hundred men he promises Washington that he will protect the flank of Virginia and prevent the British from coming down that way to invade Virginia and the Carolinas. As the war progresses he rises to become a general in the Continental Army and holds the British, Tories and Indians at bay in his sector of the country. He meets and marries the beautiful daughter of a well known Boston Doctor who is very involved in the revolution and whose liberty is threatened by the British. Through eight years of bloody warfare Larkin sees his little empire growing and his friends prospering dispite the war. In the last major battle he must face the largest force of Indians used during the war, over 3,000, along with a few hundred British soldiers, all commanded by the same cousin who had usurped his title and lands and ordered the murder of his father and brother so many years earlier. Filled with much background on colonial days, and many little known facts about historical figures, it is at once a story of building a settlement in the wilderness against the backdrop of the revolutionary war, and a love story of two strong willed people who are prepared to build a whole new world in order to preserve their love.

About the Author

Rick White was born in Texas, raised in New York City and has traveled much of the world. A retired editor of newspapers and magazines, he owned an ad agency in Florida and the Bahamas for over a decade and lived and wrote abroad for many years. Today he and his wife live in central Kentucky where he continues to write and is editor of an online magazine and a contributor to several other magazines.