The American Revolution: Courage

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American Revolution | Historical Fiction | Thomas Paine | George Washington | Revolutionary War

What does courage look like when you don't feel brave?

George Washington “vaccinated” soldiers by giving them smallpox on purpose, and it may have saved the Revolution. That jaw-dropping history is just one of the realities we dig into with author Katherine Goodwin Tone as we explore her debut novel, The King’s Broad Arrow, an American Revolution adventure that doubles as a coming-of-age story about courage.

In this episode of Cross Word Books, we speak  about Sam Nevins, a 14-year-old boy living in Revolutionary-era Maine who believes he's the only person with no desire to fight and no courage to offer. Through Sam's journey, we explore how courage is often less about personality and more about the choices we make when fear would rather send us home.

Drawing on years of working with children and teaching, Katherine discusses themes of responsibility, friendship, happiness, and moral growth. We also dive into the world of Revolutionary America, exploring the impact of the printing press, censorship, banned books, Enlightenment thought, and the influence of Thomas Paine and his famous pamphlet Common Sense.

If you enjoy historical fiction, young adult novels, American Revolution history, or thoughtful conversations with authors, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

Meet The Book And Its Hero

Michele McAloon 0:08

Welcome to Crossword. My name is Michelle McElhoon, your host. Crossword is an Archangel media production and can be found along with other great Catholic radio programming on ArchangelRadio.com. Today I want to welcome Catherine Goodwin Tone, author of The King's Broad Arrow, a truly great adventure story set in the American Revolution. Welcome, Catherine. All right, it's Catherine. Your story begins with Sam Nevins, the central character who is a 14-year-old boy in 1775 living in Maine. And although all those around him want to fight, he believes he's the only one who has no desire to fight, and he believes he doesn't have the courage to fight. So throughout your book, the reader sees how Sam gains confidence and begins to understand the principles of duty, loyalty, courage, and responsibility. Although your book could be considered a young adult novel, there's a very serious and well-researched history of the events of the American Revolution as a backdrop to your story. What inspired you to

Teaching Kids Philosophy Through Story

Michele McAloon 1:14

write this book?

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 1:15

The inspiration came from, I think if you go back about 12, 15 years when I was living in Virginia, and my kids went to a wonderful elementary school. And I was not a teacher there, but I was pretty involved with the school. And I happened to read a wonderful book by Marietta McCarty called Little Big Minds. And she it was about her experiences teaching children philosophy. And it I had such a visceral reaction to this book. And I approached the principal at the elementary school and said, you know, I think I'd like to try this as an elective. And so she said, Oh, we'll come up with some lesson plans. And it went forward from there. And I did it for two years. Each week we covered a different theme. For example, courage, happiness, friendship, responsibility. The kids just their response was so wonderful. It was so much fun. So then a few years later, I wanted to kind of keep going in that idea of exploring those themes with kids, but in a different medium. So I decided to try to write a book.

Michele McAloon 2:17

And it's interesting because you can see kind of the philosophical strands through the book in a way that is can appeal to young audience without it being condescending. It's really, you really do achieve a lot in this book. Your description of Sam Nevins and the things in which he has to go through to mature is actually very accurate in how young boys do mature. It's how mothers see boys mature. How did you get into the mind of Sam Nevins?

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 2:49

I think it just came from I've worked with kids a lot in my life. I was a preschool teacher, I was a private school teacher, I raised two kids. I mean, I raised a young man, and I don't know, to be honest. I just tried to imagine what he was feeling and what kids go through at that age. And I wanted to impart a few just life lessons for my readers. And so thinking about what Sam was thinking and how he was processing what was happening to him was a way to help me get those stories, those lessons across better.

Michele McAloon 3:26

I could tell a mother of a young boy had written this book because you talk about Sam being hungry a lot. And hunger and food is it was an issue in the story, as I'm sure it was an issue during the time, but it's truly a mother that knows a boy's hunger. So that was a great human touch in the story. Tell our audience briefly, what is the King's Broad Arrow?

The King’s Broad Arrow Explained

Michele McAloon 3:51

Was this factual in history? And how it plays in the story is actually ingenious. So the title of the book, The King's Broad Arrow. What is the King's Broad Arrow?

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 4:02

The King's Broad Arrow is a very simple symbol of three prongs, kind of, that goes back to I think the 1400s, and it was used to mark royal naval property. So you'll often find cannons with just the three stripes, almost anything. Even prisoners were branded. So anything to having to do with the British Navy was marked. In the context of this story, it was also used to mark trees that were designated to be cut down and used for shipmasts. And in the part of New England where Sam was from, it wasn't technically main until 1820. They sold lumber to the British Navy for about a hundred years, and the one particular tree grew there that was perfect for a shipmast. So it was marked with these, you know, they would just walk through the forest and just do it with a hatchet, three simple slashes. And so I didn't know anything about that. The title of the book originally was completely different. But when I I knew I wanted Sam to be from that part of the country. So when I started researching what was happening in the early bit of the revolution in the Northeast, I found all this stuff about the King's Broad Arrow laws. And it was just so fabulous. And I thought, that's it. That's the new name of my book. And it just worked out as a great way to tell the story and Sam's scar and it just all fit together.

Michele McAloon 5:30

It does. And it fits very nicely, and you interweave it through the plot in a very ingenious fashion. So very, very good storytelling.

Washington’s Risky Smallpox Inoculation

Michele McAloon 5:38

Very significantly, extremely significantly, considering what has happened in the past year, your book opens with Sam being vaccinated against smallpox under the orders of General George Washington. Now tell us, Catherine, when did you write this story? What inspired you to put that into the story? Was this something as the result of the pandemic, or was this just kind of a premonition? No, pre-pandemic.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 6:13

Took me a long time to write. And I just somewhere along my research about Washington and the war, that fact came up, and it was so interesting to me that not a lot of people know about it. So from the very beginning, when Washington took over as the commander of the Continental Army, he had to deal with smallpox. And it was something that perpetually uh showed up in the colonies, and no one really had immunity to it. The process of inoculation, which was also called variolation because it was the variola virus, was banned in the colonies because of just religious reasons and they were superstitious about the science. But nonetheless, Washington, this was wiping out many more soldiers than actual fighting with the British. So Washington really couldn't do much about it until later in the war. So in the winter of 1777, really the first hard winter of the war, and they just defeated the Hessians at Trenton and they kind of pushed the British back out of New Jersey. And it was typically winter, there's not really a lot of fighting. So it was the perfect time to inoculate the whole army at once. It was super risky because the inoculation, you're out for a couple weeks with a small that that time with a smallpox vaccination here. You know, maybe you have a few rough days, but but it was probably the most one of the most important decisions that George Washington made. And it's strange that not a lot of people seem to know about it.

Michele McAloon 7:46

I found, you know, actually, I found it shocking. And what I found more shocking was your actual description of when they received the smallpox vaccination or the variolation, as they wanted to call it, actually were infected with smallpox. And they had to, and they really were down for, and it looks like Sam was down, as you described, maybe a week or so with this. It was horrible. They basically they gave them smallpox so they wouldn't get a worst case of smallpox. That's what it sounded like to me.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 8:19

Exactly, exactly. And another just totally interesting, it's not really trivial, it's actually quite important, is that Washington had smallpox when he was 19. He went to Barbados with his brother and he had smallpox when he was out for about 20 days. So you think about if he hadn't survived, which a lot of people didn't, I mean, the mortality rate was I think 30%. So it's kind of miraculous that Washington was one of the people that actually survived smallpox because he he wasn't inoculated, he actually got smallpox. Wow. That's fascinating. Wow. Yeah. I just really wanted to include that in the story, and it became a great way to begin and end the story. As you know, it sort of begins and ends with that vaccination process. And I really wanted to write that chapter where he's kind of hallucinating, and I thought that would be

Enlightenment Ideas And The Printing Press

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 9:10

a lot of fun.

Michele McAloon 9:10

So it really works out in the story, but it also this vaccination is part of a bigger picture that you're writing too. So throughout the story, you try to place some of the ideals of the Enlightenment in terms of the advancement of science, the arguments against monarchy or hereditary rule, and the effect the press had on, and when I say the press, both journalism and a physical press, like a Gutenberg press, had on revolutionary ideas. Why did you think this was such an important element to the story? How these ideas of enlightenment were actually embedded into a lot of the revolutionary narrative.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 9:57

Because I think that that the Enlightenment ideals are what spurred the revolution. I mean, that's what inspired the revolution. But to form a country based on a set of principles had never been done. So I wanted to show how certain milestones along the way led to this moment. And the Gutenberg press, obviously huge one, because it it brought this the spreading of ideas to common people. It it changed who could own books, who could read what could be printed. Up until then, really the church controlled everything that was printed. So if you didn't, you just didn't the common people didn't have access to books. And I think just because I was writing the book in in Germany and living 10 minutes from Mainz where Gutenberg was from, it was I couldn't resist bringing him into the story. And then it works in terms of him, Sam learning about Gutenberg leads to learning how to make ink, which leads to helping Thomas Paine. I'm gonna give away too much of the story.

Michele McAloon 11:28

One of the genius parts of this book is how you're able to interweave the story of Sam Nevins into the actual historical events. So the the story is about a young boy and him maturing and grasping the ideals of loyalty, courage, responsibility, and duty, but all very much in coordination with what is actually also happening in the American Revolution as this group of people who want to be self-governed also confront these ideals of loyalty, responsibility, duty, courage. It's I mean, it works wonderfully.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 12:09

I I wanted the book to be as accurate as possible, and it was very challenging at times to do that, to make it fit. Literally, I mean, sometimes I would have hours, you know, a day broken down into hours, uh Sam's day of how long could he really have walked this distance in a day, when to the date that common sense was printed and would have been distributed and all these things. And sometimes it didn't work. You know, something I wanted to include just absolutely would not have worked time wise chronologically, but it was just it's I think it's just really important for your readers to to make it as uh accurate as possible. And so I I did a ton of research, way more than I probably needed to, but then you just filter it all into what you need for the actual story.

Michele McAloon 13:01

The fruit of your research is the cohesiveness of the story that you are telling. And it has a very clear voice and a very clear narrative, and it is. It's for a first-time novelist, you've done a tremendous job here. You've done a tremendous job for a very experienced novelist, too. So it's a it's a great story. You have a very interesting character, a French man named Gerard, who serves as a mentor for Sam. Why this character kind of brought back to mind as you know, Jean Valjean 24601. You know, but why this character who was very interesting and really served to kind of form Sam?

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 13:45

Sometimes I feel like when I was writing this book, the universe just gave me some gifts. And I was going into the V Spotton Library one day, and I passed uh three books rack and saw a book by a man named Robert Darton called The Underground Best Sellers of the French Revolution. It was basically about this underground book market in pre-revolutionary France. It was so fascinating how books so many books were banned in France. If they were anti-monarchy or anti-church, they couldn't be printed. So books were printed in Amsterdam and Switzerland and smuggled and carried over the mountains and by porters. But if you sold or printed these books, you were imprisoned. So that was just so fascinating. And that's where the character of Gerard came from is just imagining one of these booksellers. So his story is tricky again chronologically because he had to be young enough to have been alive still during the revolution, but old enough to have actually been in the Bastille with Voltaire. And Voltaire was in the Bastille twice. So it was I just had to fit him right in that time span that actually worked.

Michele McAloon 15:05

And

Banned Books And Power Over Ideas

Michele McAloon 15:06

this banning of books, boy, that kind of rings true. A little bit of a premonition of what is happening now as authors are getting canceled, as books are being pulled from Amazon, that you know, knowledge is power. He who controls knowledge controls power. And this is something that we have seen repeated through history that the spreading of ideas through the knowledge of books has always been dangerous to those who are in power. And there's a lot of lessons that can be learned from the past to look at and analyze what is happening today. So books are very, very powerful in the way that they form us, in the ideas that we form about our own sense of governance, about our own sense of what is right and wrong. So books are really powerful. And I I felt like Gerard actually represented that in your book. And the same way with Thomas Paine. His writings basically inflamed the revolution. Oh, yeah. Which they he it was definitely a tool. They were the saving grace for George Washington and being able to keep the soldiers that he had recruited. Publications are as important now as they were 200 years ago, 250 years ago, 600 years ago in the 1400s when Gutenberg came out with his press.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 16:40

So fascinating to me is we're having the same discussions that they had, really. I mean, we're still asking the same questions that they asked during the Enlightenment, but what is the role of government? What are the basic human rights? What are the rights of man? Do we use science for pushing the human race further, or do we treat it with suspicion? Absolutely fascinating to me that so many things are still happening that are so similar to what you know what they were dealing with.

Michele McAloon 17:13

You know, it's this side of Eden, and it will always be part of the human question. How do we temper knowledge known as science? How do we coordinate that with faith? How do we coordinate with that understanding of ourselves and how do we use science? So it's some very, very deep thoughts that come out in the young adult book.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 17:34

Well, I want to keep a really focus on common sense in the story because it was such a pivotal, pivotal moment. So many people were on the fence at that point. And I think we, at least when I was growing up, I was taught almost a I don't know, a sanitized version of the revolution that it was portrayed as sort of a spontaneous, unanimous event. And it it wasn't, it was a civil war. And so common sense was it enabled people to disconnect from the idea of the king as a patriarchal figure, and it just did so many things for to help push people into that next step of fighting for a complete break from England.

Michele McAloon 18:19

One of the things that your story does very well, it does not make the American Revolution a caricature. It's not a cartoon, it was not a simple process. There were there were many, many conflicts in deciding what to do and what to do next. And you even show a point where George Washington is frustrated with Congress because Congress isn't doing enough or Congress is trying to do too much, not unlike what we deal with today. There was no easy or simple solution. It was complex. I like how you talked about some of the soldiers who these soldiers came from different language groups. They didn't even speak English. They didn't even all speak English. And yeah, and actually, even as far into World War I, there were groups of soldiers, of American soldiers when they were recruited, did not speak English. And English did not come the stable language of the United States until after World War I. And a lot of people forget that. Very interesting. So, you know, you tell it, you tell the American Revolution through a complex prism of human stories, of human differences. And in that human differences and how to mediate those differences, we were able to come together to create something very great like the American Revolution, like Declaration of Independence. It was not in our sameness that was our greatness. It was in our differences, I believe still holds true today, that it is not how much we are the same, it's how we are so different and how we can weave those differences together to become unified. And we can do that if we don't look for simple, easy solutions. We have to look, understand that solutions are complex and requires everybody's input. The ideas were revolutionary, the values of duty, loyalty, responsibility, courage. These are actually the true heroes of your book in the end. These are the values that win the day. Because Sam comes to understand himself better in learning to live these values and what these values meant to him. Was this intentional?

Courage As Choices Not A Trait

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 20:45

Honestly, I did not plan the story out. I kind of just have a little bit of imposter syndrome or something. I didn't. I did want to explore these these themes of primarily courage and responsibility. So how best to show it's not simple, it's not a it's not something that you just are born with. It's choices that you make. And he did it sort of subconsciously a lot of times. It came from his more from his heart than a deep, well-developed sense of his own priorities, I think. But then he doesn't even see it in himself really until the end of the book. He's just I think he's just doing the right thing. He's a good-hearted person and he wants to help his friends. And yes, he he feels a loyalty to people that he cares about, but it just kind of came out.

Michele McAloon 21:46

Here's a young boy who wants to get back home, back home to his family. He's 14, he's 15 years old, but he chooses to fight because he knew that George Washington at this point had a Dire need. And it would again, it was this duty and responsibility and loyalty, even at the price of sacrifice. And it's a very poignant point in your book. It is. It's really good. Did you see a lot of these same values played out in the American Revolution with the people that you were researching that made up the American Revolution of again of men and women responding out of duty and courage and loyalty and responsibility to a dream, to a dream that was so fragile and so whisper thin for so many decades, actually.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 22:44

I did. Biographies, of course, those are those are not as personal. I mean, I read a lot of biographies as reading letters and journals and those things like that, where you definitely get a more personal idea of what they're feeling. And just the day to day, one of the great best diaries I found was Greenwood, Johnny Greenwood, the Pfeiffer. Sam meets and and I put him in kind of late in the story, but he he was so appealing. And it's his story is incredible that he survived that horrendous expedition to Quebec. He he didn't stay beyond Trenton and Princeton. And he actually went on to become George Washington's dentist, which is a great, another great story. But yes, I did get a sense, but then you never know if people are writing those diaries for for posterity. I think founding fathers, everything they wrote maybe was with an eye to how history was going to view them.

Michele McAloon 23:46

So

Why Washington Earns Admiration

Michele McAloon 23:47

they might have been a little more polished, but you have a genuine an admiration for George Washington in the book. Oh, I do. You do. Why? How what was some of your research on George Washington and how did you come to this conclusion that he really was a noble and honorable man sacrificing himself for this idea of the United States of America?

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 24:10

It just comes through the the more that you learn about him. And I mean you learn that he was definitely flawed. He wasn't the greatest at at anything, honestly. Like he wasn't the greatest at strategy. He wasn't, he never commanded an army that large. He, yeah, there were a lot of challenges to his leadership, but he had this combination of characteristics, which is exactly what was needed at the time, and enough confidence in himself. In our history, we've gotten at the right times the right person once in a while. Like I think Lincoln was uh obviously another great example. I didn't know that much about George Washington before I started this book. I think the book that I enjoyed the most was Washington's Crossing, which I highly recommend. That just showed all the challenges he faced and how he he just pulled it together and he he subverted his own ambition to the needs of the army, which as you know it's what you do as a general, but that's hard, that's a sacrifice, and he's constantly retreating and because he knew he fully engaged with the British that they the Continental Army was not prepared for that. So things like that made me admire him so much. Do you have any plans for a sequel to the book? Uh-huh.

Sequels, Eamon, And Boyhood Friendship

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 25:33

Yeah, I'm starting the research for a sequel because as you know, the book it's an ending, but it's kind of a beginning. Sequel will be, I think I'll do two more and and stretch it out to the end of the war. The sequel will have a lot more of Eamon because we we really just get a little taste of Eamon. And in the original version, Eamon dies. And the last scene is Sam back home, like sitting in front of Eamon's grave, and I just couldn't do it. Who was Eamon? Tell our audience. From the very beginning of the story. And Eamon is this fiery Irish kid who's Sam's best friend, Machias, and Machias Main. Uh-huh. And he just can't wait to go and fight the British. That's the counter to Sam's reluctance and doubt about his own. You know, he's kind of envious that Eamon is so fearless, and and it's not till later in the story he realizes Eamon probably had a lot of fear, but he just knew that going to fight was the right thing for him to do. So you do it, you know. You just we all do things like that in life. They don't they're not on on such a grand scale, but you you constantly have to have little acts of courage, and kids certainly do every single day.

Michele McAloon 26:50

And your opening scene with Sam and Eamon and their young boy friendship and the pond and the Tommy Hawk and Carl the catfish really captures the world of little boys. It really does, or of young, maybe not little boys, but young boys of deep friendship between these young boys. And it really is very charming. It really is. If a listener out there wants to purchase your book, where's the best place for them

Where To Buy And Who It’s For

Michele McAloon 27:20

to go buy your book?

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 27:21

You can order the book in many places, obviously Amazon, and it's only available right now on Kindle. So if you want the ebook, you have to just go through Amazon. I mean through Kindle, Barnes Noble, Indie Books, any bookstore, if you just go to their website, they can order it for you. I mean, it's published on demand, so anywhere you just online. You can't, it's not in bookstores, but you can go online.

Michele McAloon 27:46

Okay. This would be a great book for if you have uh teenagers, if you have young adults, if you just want to brush up on your own timeline of the American Revolution, some of the key players. This is a great book for an adult. As an adult, I loved reading this book. It's absolutely adorable, historical, thought-provoking, knowledgeable. It's Catherine Tone did a great, great job in writing this book. And what really is amazing, this is your first novel. So I was it's really impressive.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 28:24

I had so much fun doing it. I really did you can tell. I mean, it was it was really honestly one of the most I I've had a very interesting, adventurous life, and this this experience is one of the most joyful things that I've ever done. Just combining like that really fascination with history and then creating a story and kind of bringing these characters to life. It was so fun. I mean, there were certainly bad days that I what am I doing? It was wonderful.

Michele McAloon 28:57

You kind of see a joyous patriotism in your writing.

Patriotism, Contradictions, And Closing Thoughts

Michele McAloon 29:01

And I know patriotism is a much maligned word, but pride of the peculiarity of our lives is never a wrong thing. And you know, what is particular and what is peculiar to our lives is what we love and what we find pride in. And that that sort of patriotism is very deeply centered in our love of from where we come, our love for others, and a love for a vision of the future. And that is not a bad or negative thing. Actually, patriotism is not a bad thing, as long as it's kept in the context of what it is supposed to be, and that's love of love of place, love of others, love of a potential future that pride in place brings. So I it's a real shot in the arm for what we need, I think, right now.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 30:00

It was honestly, I know it sounds kind of cheesy, but this book made me believe in America again. Just going back to those ideas and trying to explain it, explain what people were going through by making these characters. And I just believe that we can be that country we were we're meant to be. There's a there's a lot of contradictions in the beginning of our country. Obviously, slavery is the biggest one. Definitely want that to be part of the next book. I mean, it's I I really like Thomas Paine's kind of foreboding when he's talking to Sam about that could be the one thing that if they could just figure it out. But then in the context of the time, they couldn't. They really could not have kept the coalition together if they had tried to abolish slavery at that time. So, yes, lots of contradictions in our history, in our leaders, but at the same time, it all goes back to those ideas that that this country was based on, that it's beautiful. I mean, it's a country. I really it was that was part of the joy of writing it is I I want kids to realize this is this is your country. And just like Sam, you what kind of country do you want it to be? You have to choose and you have to get out there and fight for it.

Michele McAloon 31:25

Actually, you have to fight for the life you want to live. And that is such a great quote in this book. So, adults, get it for your kids. And guess what? Adults, you need to read this book too. It is just such a great book. You've been listening to Crossword, an archangel media production. It can be found along with other great Catholic radio programs on archangelradio.com. We have been speaking with Catherine Goodwin Tone, the author of The King's Broad Arrow. Catherine, thank you so much for your time.

Kathryn Goodwin Tone 31:57

Thank you. I enjoyed it so much.