The author has created a character from the early 1700s-Thomas Doty, who lives on a family farm outside of Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania. He meets a weathered sea captain who is down on his luck and short of hands aboard his sloop, the Shannon. Intrigued by adventure, Thomas goes to sea, but ends up shipwrecked and seized by a band of surly cutthroat pirates. Now, amid the designs of some sordid brigands well-acquainted with wanton cruelty, Thomas wonders if his courage and cunning can release him from his captors' wily schemes. His escape from them only hurls him into challenges fraught with unforeseen circumstances as he journeys homeward and beyond, discovering the distant frontier of western Pennsylvania and the Ohio country teeming with Mingo, Delaware, Shawnee, and Seneca Indians intent on preserving their culture from the ever-encroaching whites. As Thomas negotiates with death on the one hand and life on the other, survival forces him onward. He encounters English and French traders and finds friends, love, and a mortal enemy as he endures life within the turmoil of the French and Indian War, Pontiac's Rebellion, and the siege of Fort Pitt.
"Last Run of the Whisperer" is a historical fiction novel based upon the Revolutionary War records of William Waterman of Norwich, Connecticut colony. The author has taken the information that William Waterman has provided to us through his own account of his service in the American Revolution, when he petitioned the United States Congress in 1832, for a pension for said service. The author has taken the information provided by William Waterman and completed extensive research on the battles and areas of service that our hero served in, embellishing and expounded upon this information, to develop an exciting and accurate historical story surrounding our hero, William Waterman. William Waterman himself, in his petition to the United States Congress identifies one severe wound received in said service, at the battle of White Plain, in the colony of New York, above New York City. This wound by itself could have cost our hero his life. That he survived this wound and the numerous other battles and action that he undoubtedly saw was extraordinary. Although William Waterman lists a number of battles and theatres of war he saw service in, he does not describe the details of these battles. The author takes his literary liberty, upon researching these battles and events to interject our hero into the battles. That William Waterman is involved in each and everyone of these battles or theatres of war in based upon William Waterman's own account. Upon his completion of service in the Continental army, William Waterman listed his next service as a privateer, that is as a licensed pirate. The author has taken the liberty to believe that William Waterman engaged as a privateer in the cause of the upstart Americans and prayed upon British shipping, as he makes no mention of serving the British in his petition to the United States Congress, and infact lists his service as a privateer in his petition for his pension, indicating that all of his papers and records of his service in the Continental army were lost when the ship he was engaged on as a privateer was sunk, leading to his subsequent imprisonment by the British on the prison ship "Jersey." Our hero, William Waterman also does not identify the name of the ship on which he was engaged as a privateer. Again the author takes his literary liberty to name the privateer ship, and thus we have the "Last Run of the Whisperer." During the course of our adventure, William Waterman looses his boyhood friend to the cause of the American Revolution, learns that his father is fighting against him on the side of the British, looses his first love to another man while he is imprisoned, and eventually finds the girl he is to marry while hiding from the British. William Waterman finds peace and contentment spending his life after the war living in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
