Best-selling Author Brings Citizen Washington Alive in Reading

Chestertown, MD — William Martin, whose book "Citizen Washington" has received five-star reviews from readers, reads from and signs the work at 1:30 p.m., Saturday Oct. 30, at the Casey Academic Center Forum at Washington College, Chestertown, Md.. The event is free and open to the public.

Citizen Washington is a fictional account of a young reporter's search to discover George Washington's true nature shortly after Washington's death, as one character says, before the truth goes "up in smoke." The reporter, Christopher Draper, interviews people who can tell him what they have observed and thought of "America's first icon." His interviewees range from Jacob, a slave at Mount Vernon, to such famous figures as Alexander Hamilton, the marquis de Lafayette, and even Lady Washington herself. In his book, Martin pieces together a wide-lens, multifaceted portrait of citizen Washington, speaking through the voices of his various "testifiers."

In this, the 200th year since Washington's death, the reading by Martin is particularly apt. A Washington College graduate wrote of the book, "As an alumnus of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, which was founded by a financial donation from George Washington in 1782, I have a special spot in my heart for this man, made more special by this book. By the end of the book I admired Washington more because he was human."

William Martin is the best-selling author of "Back Bay," "Cape Cod," and "Annapolis." He is also the author of the PBS documentary "George Washington: The Man Who Wouldn't Be King." A native of Boston, he graduated from Harvard and received his M.F.A. from the University of Southern California. His other novels include "The Rising of the Moon" and "Nerve Ending."