A Call to Arms — William C. Hammond

A Call To Arms, the fourth novel in the award-winning Cutler Family Chronicles by William C. Hammond, features the epic saga of the seafaring Cutler family of Hingham, Massachusetts, and an ever expanding cast of characters, including real historical figures Captain Edward Preble, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Lieutenant Richard Somers, Samuel Coleridge, Bashaw Yusuf Qaramanli, and Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson. Interwoven with these historical characters is a fast-paced and gripping plot that takes the reader from Java in the Dutch East Indies to New England at the start of the nineteenth century, and on to Gibraltar, Tripoli, Malta, Sicily, Alexandria, and Cairo. Set primarily in the Mediterranean Sea during the First Barbary War (1801â€"1805), A Call To Arms offers the reader intriguing and often startling insights into a young republic's struggle to promote its principles of liberty, equality, and free trade in a world ravaged by the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and ruthless piracy in both the Mediterranean and Far Eastern waters. The US Navy answers the call of an aroused nation, and the fate of the young republic turns on the actions of a few heroic officers, sailors, and Marines.