The Topsfield Town Library is excited to host author James L. Nelson (author of With Fire and Sword: The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Beginning of the American Revolution) on Monday, June 17th in the library's Activity Room!

June 17, 2024 is the 249th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place in the Charlestown neighborhood in Boston! The Battle of Lexington and Concord was an ad hoc affair, a battle that materialized out of nowhere. Bunker Hill was something different; the first fight of the American Revolution in which both sides planned and prepared for battle. Author and historian James L. Nelson will discuss the tangle of events and personalities that led to one of the most famous events in the founding of America, a battle that changed expectations on all sides and altered the course of history.

ABOUT THE BOOK: In this book, award-winning author James L. Nelson tells the exciting and dramatic story of the fight that changed the face of the American Revolution. He looks at the events leading up to that fateful day, the personalities on both the British and American sides who made momentous decisions, and the bloody outcome of those crucial choices, which would affect the British strategy on the battlefield throughout the coming six more years of active warfare.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James L. Nelson was born and raised in Lewiston, Maine and graduated from UCLA with a degree in motion picture/television production. Finding that despite being in Southern California, it was a damp, drizzly November in his soul, Jim took the cure Melville recommended and decided to sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. For six years he worked on board traditional sailing ships, but on turning thirty he realizing it would be easier to write about sailing rather than actually doing it. His career as a writer began in 1994 and he has since written more than twenty-five works of maritime fiction and history. He is the winner or the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award and the Naval Order’s Samuel Eliot Morison Award. Nelson has lectured all over the country and appeared on the Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic and BookTV. He currently lives, writes and sails in Harpswell, Maine, with his former shipmate, now wife Lisa and two of their four children.