The Gathering Place is the 10th book in the New England Series set in a universe in which George Washington died at the Battle of Long Island in 1776 and…the Revolutionary War was lost.
Now, two hundred years later the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, the Commonwealth of New England, for so long dominated by the historic First Thirteen colonies is finally about to span the whole North American continent.
The trouble is that although the War with the Triple Alliance has been won even as the guns on the Rio Grande fell silent, the Empire was confronted by an even greater existential crisis in the Pacific. The Battle of the Sandwich islands for command of the Pearl Lagoon might have halted the Japanese march in the Central Pacific but elsewhere, European hegemony in the Far East is everywhere in retreat.
In the Old Country the government is in disarray, a make-weight sits in Government House in Williamsburg while the appointment of a new Governor is awaited and all the while our heroes tip-toe through the gathering chaos of the new era, in which it seems nothing is quite what it seems.
From Whitehall to Philadelphia, to the Pearl Lagoon and the internecine machination of the Japanese Empire, the old world order is swirling around a New England itself on the cusp of a new revolution, changes nobody foresaw on the fateful eve of Empire Day 1976, when everything changed…
The only thing anybody can be sure of is that the roller-coaster ride is not going to get any smoother any time soon!