Kenneth Roberts – The Unofficial Site

Feast of Nemesis provides short, but interesting thoughts on Roberts’ novel, Oliver Wiswell, of whom the main character is a Tory during the American Revolutionary War.

According to the post, Oliver Wiswell is contemporary:

The tragic dilemma of Oliver Wiswell and the tories is a central tragedy of our time. They learn what modern exiles have to learn: 1) that decency, thrift, sobriety, intelligence have no value in a civil war; 2) that there is no hope for the vanquished in a social revolution except to start life over again in a new country.

The post further states that “like all Roberts romances, Oliver Wiswell is also important history.”  I’m not sure I’d say that all of Roberts’ novels were primarily romances; rather, they were primarily history that involved romance within the plot.  I don’t think Roberts wrote with the idea of developing a new romance.  If this were so, his novels were all the same because the romance aspect seems to be rather identical in all of his novels.  Anyway, I digress.  The post goes on to say in regards to the novel as history:

Novelist Roberts sees the American Revolution as a social revolution in which the colonial masses, stirred by rabble rousers like Sam Adams and John Hancock, brought the colonies to the brink from which they were later saved by the men who framed the Constitution. This book explains why Americans became tories, why the tories, through they appear to have represented at least half of the population in the 13 colonies, were defeated, why the English were unable to quash the rabble in arms.

Again, interesting perspective in regards to one of K.R.’s most famous novels.