Rebels, Turn Out Your Dead

Set in New York during the Revolutionary War, the story of Salt, a colonial Long Island hemp farmer addicted to smoking his own crop, unfolds with a distinctively modern voice. Salt's rebellious 17-year-old son, James, roils routine by impulsively killing a British officer. Forced to flee his farm and family when he takes the blame for the murder, Salt is rounded up by privateers and through other misadventures ends up recaptured and imprisoned by the British. At this point, almost halfway through the book, the plot gets eclipsed by Salt's captivity, with gruesome details of the floating British prison ships anchored off Brooklyn for the length of the war. The parallel tale of Salt's wife and son accommodating the British, who occupied New York throughout the war, pales in comparison. Though the cannabis angle feels gimmicky, Drinkard (Disobedience ) offers a useful fictional complement to recent Founding Father hagiographies: a historical novel about the great majority of people who didn't fight in the American Revolution but got caught in the crossfire all the same. (Feb.)