Residents of the Hudson River Valley in particular will enjoy Mr. Longstreet's latest historical novel about the Dutch land-owning families in the Revolutionary War -- the Phillpes, the Van Cortianits, the Schuylers -- whose blood-ties could be brutallybroken when one son's, or cousin's-sympathies were loyalist, and another's colonial. David Van Cortisandt was a young man, but a leading surgeon in Washington's Continental Army. Through him, we see much of the revolutionary war in New York State -- the initial British landings on Long Island and Manhattan and Washington's retreat towards White Plains, the struggles of supplying and maintaining the northern forts such as Ticonderoga, the brutalities of Indians under British pay, Burgoyne's march from Canada in hopes of meeting Howe at Albany and his defeat at Saratoga. The author emphasizes how much the course of the war depended, for both sides, on spying and intrigue, culminating, in this story, with Benedict Arnold's treachery and the capture and execution of Major Andre. A motley array of characters -- high-born loyalists and illiterate woodsmen, old Dutch matriarchs and boxom mistresses of British generals -- lends variety and social scope to this well-paced tale.