The City of Brotherly Love

I have never been to Philadelphia. Once, in 1984, while driving with a college friend from Connecticut to Washington, D.C., I entered the city's New Jersey suburbs on Interstate 295, but not the city itself.

Since then, I have not come even close to the place that gave us the Phillies, cheesesteaks, and most important, the Declaration of Independence. Like a lot of people, I have seen the city from afar and not given it a second thought. That changed last month, at least in a figurative sense, when I began researching the Philadelphia of the late 1770s, the primary setting of my next novel and time-travel trilogy.

Since January 1, I have read books and articles, contacted experts, and watched movies and television series to get a better understanding of a setting that is as important to democracy as the declaration itself.

As I did, I learned that Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, was a pretty big deal. With a population of forty thousand, it was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere in 1776 and the center of commerce and culture in British North America. It boasted America's first library, hospital, and university. (Harvard, alas, was a mere college.)

It also featured interesting people. Ben Franklin put his stamp on the city. So did George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, William Howe, and the treasonous trio of Benedict Arnold, Peggy Shippen, and John André. All added color and intrigue to a town that never rested during America's eight-year war for independence. Some, like Franklin and Shippen, will mingle with my protagonists in the first book. Others, like Washington, will do so in the second and third.

The protagonists, two brothers from 2024, will also experience Philadelphia. They will visit the city's bustling waterfront, Independence Hall, High Street Market, City Tavern, and the countryside between Philadelphia and Upper Merion Township, where a mysterious stone shed will serve as a time portal in all three books. They will see their native Pennsylvania as it existed in the 1770s and other eras.

I hope to finish researching Philadelphia, the war, and the 1770s this month and begin writing the book itself in March or early April.

Image Credit: In "Washington's Inaugration at Philadelphia," an oil painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930), George Washington arrives at Congress Hall in Philadelphia on March 4, 1793. The public domain illustration is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.