Divided Loyalties

by Richard M. Ketchum

"Between 1760 and 1775, the inexperienced, stubborn King George III and a succession of second-rate cabinet ministers concocted a series of increasingly harsh measures to keep American colonists more firmly under British control. Instead, these actions set in motion a chain of events that forced Americans to take sides, climaxing in the war of the Revolution.". "In New York, the conflict tore apart a community that was already divided by deep-seated familial, political, religious, and economic rivalries. Now the choice forced upon New Yorkers was one that could mean the loss of everything they possessed - even life itself. At the center of Richard Ketchum's stirring narrative are two families, the Livingstons and the DeLanceys, one patriot, one loyalist, whose hazardous and largely irrevocable decisions reveal how individuals with similar life experiences chose different sides when the war erupted.". "From the outset, the Revolution was a civil war, cruelly dividing families and friend