A historical novel about the Dutch land-owning families in the Revolutionary War whose blood ties could be brutally broken when one relative's sympathies were loyalist and another's colonial. Through David Van Cortlandt, a leading surgeon in Washington's Continental Army, we see much of the war in New York State from the initial British landings on Lond Island through Benedict Arnold's treachery. A motley array of characters -- high born loyalists, Illiterate woodsmen, old Dutch matriarchs- lends variety and scope to this well-paced tale.