A Song of a Single Note

I love this story! It is very, very deeply Christian; for instance, one character is a Methodist preacher who sympathizes with Freedom's cause but has done his best to prudently prepare for his future prosperity by making himself indispensable to the English with his saddlery shop...and keeping his mouth shut. But when he realizes that the men he preached to are starving and dying in prison for their politics, he has to take a stand; he determines to aid them as best he can, even to going one day a week and leading them in a Bible study. When the commander objects, it goes a bit like this: “Have I given you cause to suspect me of being a traitor? No? Then why do you prevent me from seeing these men?...You are a Godfearing man. The Good Book says we minister to Jesus Himself when we minister to those in prison. Are you prepared to answer at the Judgment Seat for why you prevented another from ministering to Him in prison?” And so he gains his point. The characters in the book are deep thinkers, and several must be strong enough to face the loss of everything they hold dear before the story is all told.

Maria is an interesting main character...a girl of seventeen, maturing into a woman of twenty. She makes mistakes and suffers for them, in some cases very deeply.

The history of the occupation of New York is also very fascinating!

A favorite verse from the story:
No wind that blows can ever kill
The tree God plants:
It bloweth east; it bloweth west;
The tender leaves have little rest,
But any wind that blows is best.
The tree God plants
Strikes deeper root, grows higher still,
Spreads wider boughs for God's good will,
Meets all its wants.