Spines creased, cupped. Edges worn, corners bumped. Pages toned. Etc. Reading copies: expect all flaws. One man?s quest for his destiny leads him to the New World and into the heart of the American Revolution. Meet Phillipe Charboneau: the illegitimate son and unrecognized heir of the Duke of Kentland. Upon the Duke?s death, Phillipe is denied his birthright and left to build a life of his own. Seeking all that the New World promises, he leaves London for America, shedding his past and preparing for the future by changing his name to Philip Kent. He arrives at the brink of the American Revolution, which tests his allegiances in ways he never imagined. The first volume of John Jakes?s wildly successful and highly addictive Kent Family Chronicles, The Bastard is a triumph of historical fiction. ** The glittering saga of our America -- and the people who made her great. Beginning with a rag-tag group of Continental soldiers awaiting the British charge on Breed's Hill, and sweeping across the luminous fabric of our Nation's earliest, war-torn years. THE REBELS continues the passionate chronicle of Philip Kent, patriot soldier, and the colorful array of men and women. both famous and unknown, whose destiny propelled them into the epic struggle for American independence. THE REBELS captures for all time the valor and turmoil of the Revolution, as seen through the eyes of young Philip Kent -- and the reader shares his struggles, his courage, and his loves in this tempestuous saga of American heroism, spirited romance, and rousing adventure. *** With the end of the colonies' fight for independence begins a new and even more glorious battle to build a new nation. It is an epoch ripe with the passion that only a country in its springtime can inflame, and two young heirs to a family dynasty dare to confront without fear the barbarity of the West -- the Indian resistance, cruel townships, death... Here is a panorama of magnificent action, peopled by, some of the bravest characters of an age. When Abraham Kent falls in love with this step-sister, he sets in motion a fate that will drive a generation westward -- until Amanda. a girl-child with the heart of a woman, seeks the new frontier that is this land's greatest opportunity -- and most awesome dread. V** The Kent Family Chronicles continue as Jeremiah Kent becomes an infamous shootist in the Wild West-bringing him closer to a destiny that will end in bloodshed. V*** A NATION ADRIFT -- AND THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO GAVE IT HOPE It was the whip-end of an era -- when innocence died and money lust was enthroned. The new generation of Kents was locked in a feverish race for wealth -- even as Europe's millions poured across the seas, to change the face of our nation and reap its forgotten promise among the pushcarts of Mulberry Street, the hardnosed docks of Boston, the steaming Barbary Coast. Gideon Kent, his health failing, fears for the future of his lost dynasty. His actress-daughter, Eleanor, learns what it is to love an alien in the land of the free. Con-man Carter drifts cross-country in search of a lazy fortune. It falls to young Will. broken by his mother's madness, to redeem Philip Kent's American dream.