Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father - Softcover

I stumbled on the Young Washington story by happenstance, in the curious and delightful way in which one literary project can unexpectedly lead to another.   Over a decade ago I was researching my book "The Last Empty Places" (2010).  I was interested in the most unpopulated, still-wild places of the United States, outside of Alaska.  At the suggestion of a geographer friend who is an expert in GIS technology, I obtained a NASA satellite photo of the U.S. at night, and instead of looking at the clusters of lights that were cities, I looked at the darkest, blankest spots on the photo.  My plan was to visit and "profile" four of these areas - two in the West and two in the East.     One of these "blank spots" happened to be Western Pennsylvania.  It's surprising to anyone who hasn't been there that a region so close to the densely peopled Eastern Seaboard could be so mountainous and wilderness-like.  As I explored the area and its history, I kept coming across references to a twenty-something George Washington, who had made several expeditions as a young man from the coastal plantations of Virginia into the Ohio Valley wilderness and what is now Western Pennsylvania.  Some of these were harrowing winter adventures, others were military expeditions, some led by young Washington himself, that turned out badly.  He seemed to be a struggling young man prone to misadventures and mistakes - as so many males have been as young men, myself included.  Yet it also became clear he had acquired deep experience in the wilderness - something I didn't know about our first president.  The young Washington seemed a far more human and vulnerable and accessible character than the majestic, remote, Father of Our Country whose great deeds so many of us heard growing up.     Having written a great deal previously about the wilderness and humans putting themselves in extreme situations, this side of George Washington came to fascinate me.  I wanted to understand this Washington that existed before the legends grew up around him - the Washington struggling to find his way in the wilderness, and as an individual in the world.  I hoped that the story of how he eventually found his way would serve as a powerful lesson to us all.

       A vivid and groundbreaking portrait of a young, struggling George Washington that casts a new light on his character and the events leading to American independence, from the bestselling author of Astoria.