Benedict Arnold’s Navy: How America’s Greatest Traitor Won the War for Independence

In 1775, George Washington and the Continental Congress decided to bring the American Revolution to Canada, expecting that the Canadians would find common cause in the struggle for independence. By 1776 the entire enterprise had collapsed into ruin, the Continental Army in the Northern Theater in tatters and facing an enemy ten thousand strong. At that pivotal moment, all that stood between the shattered army and annihilation was one hundred miles of lake and a tiny fleet under the command of one of Washington’s most beloved generals, Benedict Arnold. Award-winning Maine author and historian James L. Nelson will tell the story of that year of fighting and the unlikely naval battle on Lake Champlain that resulted in American victory in the War for Independence.
Jim Nelson was born and raised in Lewiston, Maine, and for six years worked on board traditional sailing ships before launching a writing career in 1994. He has since written more than thirty works of maritime fiction and history. He is the winner of the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award and the Naval Order’s Samuel Eliot Morison Award. He currently lives in, and sails out of, Harpswell, Maine, with his former shipmate, now wife, Lisa.
This program is being offered in partnership with the Androscoggin Historical Society.
This is a hybrid program: options to attend either in-person or virtually.
Registration is only required if planning to attend virtually. www.auburnpubliclibrary.org/event/author-talk-james-l-nelson-10863