Newport Rising — John Rolfe Gardiner

NEWPORT RISING --Historical Novel by prize-winning author John Rolfe Gardiner Pre-Revolutionary Newport, Rhode Island, thriving nest of the American slave trade, a virtual city-state of multiple faiths, independent traders and craftsmen, boasted a perfect harbor for its tariff-flouting commercial armada. It was thus a prime target for British invasion and occupation. Here, Cotton Palmer, journeyman printer and political essayist cuts a dangerous path between colonists who might shoot him and the British who hope to hang him. Palmer and the abolitionist lady-friend who won't be his wife are subjects of censure in the precariously-balanced town, where religious tolerance and the slave trade, freedom of conscience and bondage, side by side, sow the seeds of our American civil history. The novel delves into the pliable mind of this 18th Century hub where the war's outcome will turn many friends of England, and fence-sitters, into life-long patriots. John Rolfe Gardiner is the author of five previous novels and three story collections. He is recipient of a National Endowment grant, winner of the Lila Wallace award and has appeared in The New Yorker, American Scholar, American Short Fiction, Ontario Review, Oxford American, O Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize volume, and many other periodicals and anthologies.