When old Michael Eisan meets young Sarah Lawrence, she reawakens his youthful self. But perhaps the past is a country best left undiscovered. The questions she asks him take him back to South Carolina and his days fighting for the King as a militiaman during the American Revolution. When Michael falls ill and Sarah nurses him, her presence stirs in him long-repressed memories of his emigration to the New World. In the tumult of his last days, he remembers a final, tragic secret he has never confided to anyone. The Loyalist is based on the true story of the author's great-great-great-great-grandfather Michael Eisan, whose life took him from the Palatine area of Germany to South Carolina and finally to Ship Harbour, Nova Scotia where he died at the age of 103.