For much of the book, Curazon is forging ahead without Isabel, forging new friendships in the fictional Massachusetts 16 th Regiment and a new identity, creating and recreating himself in order to survive until he discovers that he has become who he imagined himself to be: a Continental soldier, a friend, a man in charge of his internal compass. Like the word “chains,” “forge” is metaphorical as both a noun and verb in this well-researched and beautifully-crafted historical novel. In book two of the trilogy that began with National Book Award Finalist Chains, Curazon, the perhaps-free, perhaps-still enslaved African-American soldier liberated from a British prison in Manhattan by Isabel at the end of the first book, picks up the narration and the events of the Continental Army’s encampment at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-1778.
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