THE TREE OF LIBERTY

by Elizabeth Page ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 1939

This is the first big thrill of the New Year -- a dark horse with great possibilities. Really grand reading! I had much the same feeling in reading it that I found in reading John Hyde Preston's 1776, a number of years ago, a sense of a period coming alive, a period that had hitherto followed more or less history book lines. Elizabeth Page, in THE TREE OF LIBERTY, has given to the Revolutionary War the sense of reality, of human conflict, that Margaret Mitchell gave to the Civil War. James Boyd did it, for specific periods in some of his books. Elizabeth Page has spanned a wider reach, for her story starts when the first rumblings of discontent, from here and there, reached out and touched a few scattered colonials in Virginia, and it goes on to the return of the Lewis and Clark expedition and the opening up of wider frontiers. Against a background which includes historic figures in very human guise, Jefferson, predominantly, Washington, Lafayette, Adams, Madison, Burr, Hamilton and others, is told a story that symbolizes a stirring period, a story of the inner struggle in one family, a family torn by dissension, political and social, divided against itself, and dramatizing in small compass, a new state reaching out for understanding and uncertain of itself. In Matt Howard and his patrician wife, Jane, the whole thing comes to a focus -- and theirs is a moving story of love and misunderstanding and warring emotions and ideals, of two dominant figures at odds. A good yarn, with plenty of action, a large canvas of characters, enough of historical import for credence. It is long, perhaps unduly long, but interesting from first to last. An important book.

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 1939

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar & Rinehart

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939

Categories: FICTION