True Freedom
Michael Dean
Published on 12 June 2019
ISBN 9781907320866
£10.99, $16.00
|
Set in Boston and London over sixteen years, True Freedom is a panoramic account of how America came to fight Britain for its freedom in the eighteenth century. The Boston scene is set through vignettes about the people who shaped its history. Thomas Hutchinson, Boston aristocracy, whose wealth is seemingly unassailable. Self-taught medical doctor Thomas Young meets his hero Samuel Adams who is determined to have his revolution, supported from London by the radical politician John Wilkes. True Freedom is full of vivid period details; you can almost smell Parliament in London or hear the clerks scribbling away in the American Department. So too, in Boston, you experience the might of the British navy in the harbour, and feel the determination of the Boston people to defy Parliament in London. Together they form facets of the main character: the Boston uprising. In his novel Michael Dean takes us right to the heart of identity and sovereignty by focusing on personal relationships especially the one between brothers Thomas Pownall, Governor of Massachusetts and later a MP, and John Pownall, undersecretary of the American Department in London. |
In this intelligent and meticulously researched novel, Michael Dean introduces readers to the major players and guides them expertly through the developments that, ultimately, led to the birth of a nation. – Catherine Hanley
True Freedom is a fascinating insight into the breakdown in relations between the British government and the American colonies. Michael has a wonderful, almost Dickensian, ability to sketch out vivid and entertaining characters. – Stephan Collishaw
About the Author:
Michael Dean has a history degree from Worcester College, Oxford, an MSc in Applied Linguistics from EdinburghUniversity and a translator’s qualification (AIL) in German.
He has published several novels. The Darkness into Lightomnibus (Sharpe Books, 2017): The Rise and Fall of the Naziscomprises five titles: Before the Darkness – about the German Jewish Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, assassinated in 1922; The Crooked Cross – about Hitler and art; The Enemy Within – about Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation;Hour Zero – about Germany in 1946; Magic City – a novel of Jewish identity set in Germany in the early 1970s.
He also published some stand-alone novels: Thorn, (Bluemoose Books, 2011) about Spinoza and Rembrandt; I, Hogarth (Duckworth-Overlook, 2012), which sets out to unify Hogarth’slife with his art; The White Crucifixion, a novel about Marc Chagall, was published by Holland Park Press in February 2018.
His non-fiction includes a book about Chomsky and many educational publications.