Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway - Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale by Bill Zarchy

Welcome to my stop on the virtual book tour for Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale by Bill Zarchy. This book tour was organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. On my stop, I have an excerpt from the book as well as a great guest post from the author. There's also the tour wide giveaway for a chance to win a $50 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for more content. Enjoy!

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Title: Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale

Author: Bill Zarchy

Publisher: Roving Camera Press

Publication Date: November 19th 2020

Print Length: 284 pages

Genre: Historical Thriller

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On a freezing night in 1778, General George Washington vanishes. Walking away from the Valley Forge encampment, he takes a fall and is knocked unconscious, only to reappear at a dog park on San Francisco Bay—in the summer of 2014.

Washington befriends two Berkeley twenty-somethings who help him cope with the astonishing—and often comical—surprises of the twenty-first century.

Washington’s absence from Valley Forge, however, is not without serious consequences. As the world rapidly devolves around them—and their beloved Giants fight to salvage a disappointing season—George, Tim, and Matt are catapulted on a race across America to find a way to get George back to 1778.

Equal parts time travel tale, thriller, and baseball saga, Finding George Washington is a gripping, humorous, and entertaining look at what happens when past and present collide in the 9th inning, with the bases loaded and no one warming up in the bullpen.

**The eBook is only $0.99!**

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EXCERPT:

The General sat back, bone-weary, enjoying the rest. He then examined his drink.

“Beer, you say?” he grinned tightly. “Very watery, isn’t it?”

We quickly ran out of things to say. He marveled at the cans.

“Such bright, beautiful metal! They appear to be made of gold and silver.”

“Not.”

After a while, inevitability reared its ugly head. “Young man?”

“Please call me Tim, General.”

“Timothy. Could you kindly direct me to the privy?”

“Sure. But I’d better show you how to use it. It’s all changed since your day.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Well, there are plumbing devices to learn.”

“Plumbing?”

I took him on a tour of the bathroom. I was sure that, even in wartime, the General had always washed from a basin filled with warm water by servants. He had probably never seen running water in a sink, much less a shower.

At the basin, he gleefully grasped the left lever and twisted, then stuck his hand under the tap.

“Oh my! It’s warm. No, it’s hot! Who heats this water and puts it into this pipe?”

“The water comes from a tank, where it’s kept hot by burning a fuel. Here’s where you sit, General.” I showed him how to lift the lid and the seat and mentioned the protocol of closing the seat after use. He eyed the toilet suspiciously.

“And this little magic lever on the side blows water through and makes it all go away,” I added.

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where does it go?”

“Just … away.”

“Is it magic, Timothy? Like the cold box?”

“No sir, just technology.”

“Eh?

“Invention. Science.”

He was curious, yet his shoulders slumped with each new revelation, his apparent displacement in time and space beginning to weigh on him. He needed help.

He looked at me with a tight smile. “I fear I must rest. I hate to impose, but is there somewhere I could lay my weary head?”

I smiled. “I know just the place.”

“And perhaps something to wear that is a bit less formal than my current attire?” He looked down at his high boots and filthy wartime clothing.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Bill Zarchy filmed projects on six continents during his 40 years as a cinematographer, captured in his first book, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil. Now he writes novels, takes photos, and talks of many things.

Bill’s career includes filming three former presidents for the Emmy-winning West Wing Documentary Special, the Grammy-winning Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, feature films Conceiving Ada and Read You Like A Book, PBS science series Closer to Truth, musical performances as diverse as the Grateful Dead, Weird Al Yankovic, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and countless high-end projects for technology and medical companies.

His tales from the road, personal essays, and technical articles have appeared in Travelers’ Tales and Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies, the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers, and American Cinematographer, Emmy, and other trade magazines.

Bill has a BA in Government from Dartmouth and an MA in Film from Stanford. He taught Advanced Cinematography at San Francisco State for twelve years. He is a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area and a graduate of the EPIC Storytelling Program at Stagebridge in Oakland. This is his first novel.

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GUEST POST:

- If George Washington time traveled to the present time, what do you think he'd think about the United States now?

My answer to this question is 380 pages long, available in print or e-book versions, and soon as an audiobook. It’s my debut novel, Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale.

Basically, the whole book is about Washington’s traveling through time to the near-present (2014), his reaction to what he sees, and the modern world’s reaction to him.

Here are some of the salient points, as developed in my imagination:

Washington, I fear, would be dismayed by the intense partisanship he sees around him, the push and pull of hostile forces, and the demeaning of political opponents. My George leaps into the present from 1778, the turning point of the War of Independence, when he was in his mid-40s and struggling to unite the thirteen colonies against British imperialism. Much later in his life, he was elected to his first presidential term with a unanimous vote in the Electoral College, but his second term was fraught with fractious debate and bitter political parties. However, all that is many years in his future. My Washington is younger and more idealistic.

Washington would be confused by race relations in our present-day United States. In his world, most Black people were slaves or (often) disenfranchised freemen. The idea that African Americans could actually be prosperous, educated, fully involved members of our society would probably strike him as odd. Certainly it was outside his experience, which explains why, in my story, George is not sure how to act when he meets LaMatthew Johnson, a Black man and best friend of the protag Tim.

Washington would probably not understand our present-day attitude toward slavery and his own role as a slave owner. There is ample historical evidence that he was ambivalent toward slavery during his life, that he had been horrified to witness slave auctions that split up families, that he had at least a dawning awareness that slavery was evil and immoral. He was stuck in a system where slavery was essential to the functioning of Mount Vernon, his Virginia plantation, and slaves, treated as chattel, represented a huge portion of his wealth. It’s important to keep in mind that slavery, at the time of the Revolution, was legal in all thirteen colonies.

Washington kept his enslaved manservant Billy Lee by his side throughout the conflict. Later, when he was president, most northern states had banned slavery, but George still had no compunctions about keeping slaves with him in his presidential residences in New York and Philadelphia, or about sending slave catchers after two who escaped.

To his credit, he did attempt to free his slaves in his last will and testament, with mixed results. The slaves he owned outright went free. But the slaves who had come to the marriage as part of Martha’s dowery (previously owned by her first husband) remained in bondage, along with a third group of enslaved people, the product of the intermarriage of the first two groups. The ones who were not freed fared poorly indeed, often sold off separately, families ripped asunder.

Washington would not understand our modern concept of universal suffrage, where we try to guarantee that each citizen gets a vote. In his day, the ringing anthem of the Declaration of Independence, which boldly states “all men are created equal” was hardly true at all. More accurately, it should say “all white, male, property-owning, church-going Protestants have somewhat equal rights.” Even colonies like Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, established to provide religious freedom for certain persecuted groups, failed this standard. Providing a setting for freedom of worship did not guarantee voting rights. During the Revolution and for a number of years after, Catholics, Jews, free Blacks, non-landowners, and all women were denied the vote in most of the colonies.

Enslaved people, of course, had no rights or votes at all and, in the new Constitution of 1787, were only counted as 3/5 human. This famous 3/5 Compromise was a temporary solution to the South’s desire to have their slaves counted toward Congressional representation, but not be counted for purposes of taxation. For Washington, who owned over 300 slaves at the end of his presidency, this probably all made sense.

In our own time, of course, universal suffrage is still under attack. All citizens can vote, as long as they are pre-registered (despite how difficult that may be in their states), show up to vote on Election Day (in states where absentee voting is discouraged), and can show the correct type of ID such as a drivers’ license (even in states that have eliminated many DMV offices in poor areas). Some things never change.

Washington would love baseball, as he does in my story! Though his credentials as a landed patrician are hard to miss, George was known to enjoy ball games. In fact, Joseph Plumb Martin recounts, in his Diary of a Revolutionary War Soldier, that Washington climbed down off his white steed one day during the winter encampment at Valley Forge and engaged in a game of wicket (no, not cricket) with his troops. Similarly — in my imagination, anyway — he enjoys modern-day baseball and his friends’ beloved San Francisco Giants.

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GIVEAWAY:

Bill Zarchy will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway