Act Worthy of Yourselves

For attendees to the Ashland Public Library event with Salina B. Baker on August 10, the author will be signing bookplates for all books ordered through Aesop's Fable.

He lit the spark that ignited a revolution. Then he paid for it with his life.

In the summer of 1755, fourteen-year-old Joseph Warren left his family's farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and walked into destiny when he entered Harvard College. Brilliant, compassionate, and driven by an unshakable belief in liberty, he would become one of the most influential-and tragically overlooked-figures of the American Revolution.

A respected Boston physician, Warren healed the sick by day and challenged the British Empire by night. As a leader of the Sons of Liberty and the radical resistance to English rule, he stood at the center of a growing storm. He authored the Suffolk Resolves, a bold declaration that proclaimed colonial defiance and laid the philosophical groundwork for the Declaration of Independence. When the First Continental Congress adopted the Resolves as its first official act, Warren's words became the voice of a nation not yet born.

On the night of April 18, 1775, with British troops preparing to march on Lexington and Concord to seize rebel arms, a decision had to be made-one normally entrusted to a full committee. They were absent. The responsibility fell to Warren alone. In a moment that would change the world, he dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes on their legendary rides, setting in motion the events that ignited the American Revolutionary War.

From his leadership as President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the Committee of Safety, to his role as Grand Master of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge of Masons, Warren believed passionately that all people were entitled to medical care, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. He lived for those ideals. He died for them on the battlefield of Bunker Hill, becoming one of the Revolution's earliest and most noble martyrs.

This historical biographical novel brings Joseph Warren to life in vivid, intimate detail-a healer who became a warrior, a scholar who became a revolutionary, and a man whose courage helped give birth to a nation.