The Drums of Winter is a sweeping epic, a family saga, a novel of history. Set in the time of the American Revolution, it details the decline and fall of a great family, the proud love of a noble woman, a young man's search for his true father, and a conflict between brothers which moves from Europe to American and climaxes in one of the decisive battles of the Revolutionary War. The Haynows are the most powerful family in Hessia. Baron Haynow is a strong, self-made man, deeply in love with his wife, Anna, whom he rescued from poverty twenty years before. When the American colonists rebel against the British, it seems at first a chance to increase the Haynow family power by monopolizing the American tobacco trade. Then an intrusive figure from the past appears, resurrecting old loves, old jealousies. Anna learns that her first husband, long believed dead, is still alive in America--and that Haynow has withheld his letters from her. The revelation sets in motion a chain of conflicts that shatter the Haynow family. How these conflicts are resolved on the battlefields of the American Revolution--with Robert a mercenary under the command of his hated brother, Claus; and Anna risking death in search of her first love--provides the unexpected climax to this rich and compelling novel.