The New Guard: Defending a Nation

Boston. June 17, 1775.A nineteen-year-old innkeeper's daughter named Julia Vickers is tending the wounded at Breed's Hill when Dr. Joseph Warren, patriot, physician, and one of the Revolution's most beloved leaders, is shot dead. In that moment, Julia makes a vow. She will not go home. She will follow the army. She will give herself to the cause.She has no idea what that vow will cost her.The New Guard: Defending a Nation spans forty years of American history, from the fires of the Revolution through the smoke of the War of 1812. It is the story of two forces moving through the shadows of the young republic, one to protect it, one to undo it, and the extraordinary ordinary people on both sides of that hidden war.On one side: Julia Vickers Barnaby, who will spend the years after the Revolution building the most ambitious covert institution in American history. The Founders Orphanage is not what it appears. Its teachers are former soldiers, spies, and wartime operatives. Its students are the secret children of the men who signed the Declaration, raised under false names, trained from birth in statecraft, combat, medicine, and espionage, and prepared to be deployed invisibly into the republic they were born to protect. John Baldwin, the unacknowledged son of George Washington. Katherine Jennings, the hidden daughter of Benjamin Franklin. And four others, each carrying a legacy they do not yet know.On the other side: a gathering darkness with no name yet. In a Charleston cellar, something is being organized. Patient. Methodical. Already placing its people inside the republic's courts, pulpits, and press.By the time the War of 1812 breaks open, the first generation of the New Guard is in the field. John is embedded in a Baltimore newspaper, tracking British troop movements. Katherine is inside Dolley Madison's household in Washington City. Margaret rides through panicked streets carrying the garrison flag to Fort McHenry before the bombardment begins. And on September 12, 1814, John takes a long rifle shot at North Point that history will never record, and changes the outcome of the Battle of Baltimore.The fort holds. The flag flies. Francis Scott Key writes his poem on the back of a letter.No one will ever know who made it possible.This novel is grounded in meticulous research. The battles, the figures, the political tensions, all of it is documented history. What is invented is the hidden layer beneath it, the quiet hands that were already there.Defending a Nation is a story about the hidden costs of liberty. The children surrendered. The names unrecorded. The shots never credited. The acts of courage that history never sees.It is also a love letter to the founding documents and the flawed, determined people who gave their lives to keep those words from becoming hollow.Book One of seven. The next storm is already gathering.This novel arrives in 2026, as the United States marks its 250th birthday. That timing is not accidental. It was written to honor that anniversary, not with sentiment, but with honesty about the struggles that tested the founding ideals and the people who refused to let them die.The guardians in these pages sometimes do extraordinary things. This is fiction. But the call beneath it is real. Run for office. Write the letter. Support the cause that costs you something. Speak out when something is wrong. Our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Some of them lost all three.Can we afford to risk any less? Read more