The Hessian: The Classic Novel with a New Foreword

Howard Fast

Jun 1996 · M.E. Sharpe

About this ebook

The Hessian tells the story of the capture, trial, and execution of a Hessian drummer boy by Americans during the Revolution. At the heart of the story is a Quaker family, who hide the boy after his landing party has been killed in an ambush. Because the captain of the Hessians had ordered the hanging of a local whom he thought might be a spy, the town militia lay in wait, massacred the Hessians, and hunted down the only survivor, Hans Pohl. His capture and trial provide an opportunity to explore the difficult moral position that war presents, complicated by the presence of the Quaker family. The story is told from the point of view of Evan Feversham, a doctor who has seen enough of death, and an outsider in the narrow world of Puritan New England.

About the author

Howard Fast was born on November 11, 1914 in Manhattan. At the age of 17, he sold his first story to Amazing Stories magazine. The next year he sold his first novel, Two Villages, to the Dial Press for a $100 advance. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 80 books, including Conceived in Liberty, The Unvanquished, Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road, April Morning, The Immigrants, Second Generation, The Establishment, The Legacy, and Greenwich. He won the Stalin International Peace Prize in 1953. A member of the Communist party, he served three months in a federal prison in 1950 for refusing to testify about his political activity. Blacklisted as a result, he founded his own publishing house, Blue Heron Press, which released his novel Spartacus in 1951. In 1957, he wrote a book about his political experiences entitled The Naked God. He also wrote a series of detective stories under the name E. V. Cunningham. He died on March 12, 2003 at the age of 88.