Impressive Thriller Laced with History

In the early years of our country's formation, when the Founding Fathers contemplated replacing the Articles of Confederation with the U.S. Constitution, there were two opposing factions. The Federalists argued for a strong central government, largely run by and for the wealthy and powerful. The Anti-Federalists, favoring individual liberties over central power, feared the Federalist's idea of government would jeopardize state rights and civil liberties. The result was the Constitution, which established a central government able to tax, make laws, and wage wars, and the Bill of Rights which guaranteed state rights and personal liberty.

In Bob Mayer's The Jefferson Allegiance, the war between the two opposing factions never ended. In the early 19th century, Thomas Jefferson, an Anti-Federalist, and Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist, agree to a truce between the two factions called The Jefferson Allegiance. The Allegiance holds such power that it could take down any power-grabbing president and, perhaps, the country itself. The anti-Federalist American Philosophical Society was founded to hide and guard the Allegiance from the pro-Federalist Society of the Cincinnati.

In the 21st century, the Society of the Cincinnati decides it's time to find and destroy the Allegiance and take over the country. Guardians of the Allegiance from the American Philosophical Society start to be murdered, one by one, and usually after being tortured. Paul Ducharme, a Special Forces officer just back from Afghanistan, and Evie Tolliver, a former CIA operative and now a Jeffersonian scholar, discover they have been named the new guardians of the Allegiance and, without even knowing what the Allegiance is, are thrown into battle to protect it from the Cincinnatians.

The Jefferson Allegiance is a first rate thriller. No one writes action scenes better than Mayer, himself a West Point graduate and former Green Beret officer. The Jefferson Allegiance, however, is more than a thriller. Laced with historic fact, it is a civics lesson for a country that largely no longer teaches civics in school, a country where too many people don't understand how a democratic republic is suppose to work.

Strong writing, strong action, and strong education -- this book has it all. Definitely a five star read.