Some legends never die.
One war. One Pennsylvania farm. One boy who has to stop hitting first and start choosing. Book 1 is finished. Books 2–7 still get fitted to the page. The public hours of the Revolution do not move. Some of the private furniture might.
1 · Liberty’s Shaman
1775 · Spring · coming first
Rory MacArthur leaves Ulster with grief, a fiddle, and a trunk that is more than luggage. In Pennsylvania the farm is shelter and bait at the same time. An enchantress wearing an ordinary face is taking good men. Adaire sees what he cannot always name. Figg will not stay paid. The club in Rory’s hand can give a life back. Using it wrong leaves a mark he will carry into every book after this one. This is the book on the cover.
Tá an dorchadas ag teacht, ach an solas beidh i gcónaí. The darkness is coming, but the light will always be.
2 · Liberty’s Spy
1776 · July bells through Christmas ice
The colonies put a name on themselves in Philadelphia. By December the army is almost gone. Rory is taught how to watch and how much a friend’s death costs. Washington still crosses the Delaware with Marblehead fishermen. Rory’s work is the river’s unseen price and a song his mother left him — a strain that can drop homesick sentries. Not every man at Trenton is only a soldier. Something is wearing a Hessian colonel. The club has two ends. This is the book where Rory has to tell them apart.
Tá sé ag teacht. It is coming.
3 · Liberty’s Triumph
January 1777 · Assunpink and Princeton
Washington has won at Trenton. He is not safe. On January 2 Cornwallis reaches Assunpink Creek. The bridge holds. The mill fords could still lose the war. That night the British wait. Before dawn on January 3, Washington takes the back roads and hits Princeton.
Rory is in the high water to read those fords. Another scout goes under. Rory goes after him. He comes up the creek as a shaman who can walk farther into the Otherworld than he could before.
Adaire dreams of a glass prison before they find it. Could it be important? What does it mean? Figg helps Rory with a new rite to open the farm earth and bring forth a stone Dugald hid there — a stone that might be useful but is untested against a dark force and the Unseelie court. A druid stands with them. Two brothers from the next farm keep showing up after dark and saying less than they know.
Tá an geimhreadh ag cur as dom. The winter is wearing me out.
4 · Liberty’s Fire
Prequel · Dugald and Anna · 1750s–spring 1775
This is not Rory’s book. It is his great-uncle’s, and it is Anna’s as much as his.
On the frontier in the French and Indian War, Dugald crosses paths with a young wagoner named Morgan. A short meeting. It will matter years later. He learns the land answers if you pay it. He learns the roane: a man can go into a river and come out changed.
Anna’s letters, codes, and silences build half the hiding places. What the family thought they knew about her comes apart and comes true in the same season. They learn love, trust, and what it costs to step into danger so the other can live.
Together they make Liberty House and mark the well. The hobs leave Ebon Rae; Hobbes and his brothers stay when other help leaves.
Spring 1775. Lexington morning. A British officer carries a faery relic he should not have. Dugald raises a small ring of earth against him. Figg’s father fights and is later taken — a story Figg will tell badly and love too much.
Rory has not been born. The land is being prepared before he can inherit it.
Tá an earrach ag teacht. The spring is coming.
5 · Liberty’s Stand
Winter 1777–78 · Valley Forge
Men starve. Men freeze. Men die in the huts. In February, Baron von Steuben arrives and teaches them to drill. Anthony Wayne is in camp. The Marquis de Lafayette is young, wounded, and still showing up. The guns and the hunger stay on the record.
Rory’s work is smaller than a battle and harder. He brings back one soldier whose eyes have gone empty. Adaire is grieving the death of a family member and can barely hear anything else. Figg keeps the camp human when despair would rather it weren’t.
A captain named O’Connell spreads that despair like a banshee through the lines. A doctor works with him. When the veil thins, Hell’s Bells ring, and sick men get sicker.
The brutal winter is the test — the Cailleach’s test of whether a people still holds together. Rumors of shad in a nearby river. Starving men. Danger around Liberty House. Rory has to help face both. George Washington still has to feed the army and help it survive.
Tá an geimhreadh crua. The winter is harsh.
6 · Liberty’s Song
1778–1780 · Monmouth toward the southern road
Summer, then the long middle of the war. On 28 June 1778, General George Washington holds Monmouth. The Marquis de Lafayette fights there, then sails for France. General Anthony Wayne is in that heat too.
Can a fiddle and a spear-rite steady men who already know how to fight — or will the sound give them away? Rory has to find out. Can Adaire see enough to help the cause? Can Figg work the weather — and is the sky willing?
In July 1779, Wayne takes Stony Point by night and bayonet. Captain Allen McLane walks in under a flag. Can Figg’s fog hide the climb? Can Rory find a watchword from a place a scout should not reach?
May 1780. At the Waxhaws, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton cuts down Americans who have already tried to surrender. The backcountry does not forget. On 7 October 1780, Scots-Irish Overmountain men meet the Crown at King’s Mountain.
A rifle that may refuse to fire for a traitor. Use the old gifts too openly in camp, and someone hangs. A sidhe trickster works the same road as a man named O’Connell. Will the old magic help the Revolution — or only get someone killed?
General Nathanael Greene opens the door into the last book.
Tá an samhradh beo. The summer is alive.
7 · Liberty’s Peace
1781–83 · Cowpens to Yorktown
Fall, and the last guns. On 17 January 1781, Brigadier General Daniel Morgan — the Old Wagoner — spends men like a miser spends coins at Cowpens. General Nathanael Greene wears General Charles Cornwallis down through the South. The Marquis de Lafayette and General Anthony Wayne show up in Virginia. French ships close the water.
Rory is at the height of his shaman power. A last Celtic weapon is in reach — a cord meant to bind, not to burn. Can he tie the other war so it does not start the morning after the guns stop? Bind too tight, and the ground sours. Bind well, and a people can go home. Can Adaire see far enough to keep him from pulling the wrong knot? Can Figg help one more time, after years of fighting for someone else’s freedom?
As Figg sees it, the country gets out from under a king. The faery side of the story is lining up a new king, and Figg is first in line. Figg has walked from a Pennsylvania farm to a Yorktown field. He has heard men choose liberty over a crown. After all that — does he take the throne, or does he give it up?
Will faery magic, the old weapons, and a shaman’s last strength help both wars end — or only one?
Síocháin go deo. Peace forever.
For classrooms · 1776–2026
The nation’s 250th
A teacher can set any of these next to the public record and still tell the truth about who crossed the ice, who froze at the Forge, and who surrendered at Yorktown. The fiction is the unseen layer. The homework is still the Revolution.
