From the Inside Flap
A story filled with danger and excitement, Johnny Tremain tells of the turbulent, passionate times in Boston just before the Revolutionary War. Johnny, a young apprentice silversmith, is caught up in a dramatic involvement with James Otis, John Hancock,and John and Samuel Adams in the exciting currents and undercurrents that were to lead to the Boston Tea Pary and the Battle of Lexington -- and finally, a touching resolution of Johnny's personal life.
Johnny Tremain is a historical fiction at its best, portraying Revolutionary Boston as a living drama, through the shrewd eyes of an observant boy.
About the Author
Esther Forbes received the Pulitzer Prize for history for Paul Revere and the World He Lived In.
From the Paperback edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
On rocky islands gulls woke. Time to be about their business. Silently they Rooted in on the town, but when their icy eyes sighted die first dead fish, Am bits of garbage about the ships and wharves they began to scream and quarrel.
The cocks in Boston back yards bad long before cried the coming of day. Now the hens were also awake, scratching, clucking, laying eggs.
Cats in malt houses, granaries, ship holds, mansions and hovels caught a last mouse, settled down to wash their for and deep. Cats did not work by day.
In stables, horses shook their halters and whinnied.
In barns, cows lowed to be milked.
Boston, slowly opened its eyes, stretched, and woke. The sun struck in horizontally from the cad, flashing upon weathervanes -- brass cocks and arrows, here a glass-eyed Indian, there, a copper grasshopper - and the bells in the steeples cling-clanged, telling the people, it was time to be up and about.
In hundreds of houses sleepy women woke sleepier children Get up and to work. Ephraim, get to the pump, fetch Mother water Ann, got to the barn, milk the cow and drive her to the Common. Start the fire Silas. Put on a dean shirt, James. Dolly, it you aren't up before I count ten...
And so, in a crooked little house at the head of Hancock' on crowded Fish Street, Mrs. Lapham stood at the foot of a ladder leading to the attic where her fathe-in-law's apprentices slept. These boys were luckier than most apprentices. Their master was too feeble to climb 1adders; the middle-aged mistress too stout. It was only her bellows that could penetrate to their quarters -- not her heavy hands.
"Boys?"
No answer.
"Dove?"
"Coming, ma'am! Dove turned over for one more snooze.
Frustrated, she shook the ladder she was too heavy to climb. She wished she could shake "them limbs of Satan."
