Description for THE LOYAL SON by Daniel Mark Epstein: The dramatic story of a founding father, his illegitimate son, and the tragedy of their conflict during the American Revolution?Çöfrom the acclaimed author of THE LINCOLNS. Ben Franklin is the most lovable of America?ÇÖs founding fathers. His wit, his charm, his inventiveness?Çöeven his grandfatherly appearance?Çöare legendary. But this image obscures the scandals that dogged him throughout his life. In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Franklin?ÇÖs biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son William. When he was twenty-four, Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. He adopted the boy, raised him, and educated him to be his aide. Ben and William became inseparable. After the famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, it was William who proved that the electrical charge in a lightning bolt travels from the ground up, not from the clouds down. On a diplomatic mission to London, it was William who charmed London society. He was invited to walk in the procession of the coronation of George III; Ben was not. The outbreak of the American Revolution caused a devastating split between father and son. By then, William was royal governor of New Jersey, while Ben was one of the foremost champions of American independence. In 1776, the Continental Congress imprisoned William for treason. George Washington made efforts to win William?ÇÖs release, while his father, to the world?ÇÖs astonishment, appeared to have abandoned him to his fate. A fresh take on the combustible politics of the age of independence, THE LOYAL SON is a gripping account of how the agony of the American Revolution devastated one of America?ÇÖs most distinguished families. Like Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough, Epstein is a storyteller first and foremost, a historian who weaves together fascinating incidents discovered in long-neglected documents to draw us into the private world of the men and women who made America.
