The Loyal Son is the dramatic story of a founding father, his illegitimate son, and the tragedy of their conflict during the American Revolution.  When he was twenty-four, Benjamin Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. He adopted the boy, raised him, and educated him to be his aide. Benjamin and William became inseparable. After the famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, it was William who proved that the electrical charge in a lightning bolt travels from the ground up, not from the clouds down.   The outbreak of the American Revolution caused a devastating split between father and son. By then, William was royal governor of New Jersey, while Benjamin was one of the foremost champions of American independence. In 1776, the Continental Congress imprisoned William for treason. George Washington made efforts to win William’s release, while his father, to the world’s astonishment, appeared to have abandoned him to his fate. A fresh take on the combustible politics of the age of independence, The Loyal Son is a gripping account of how the agony of the American Revolution devastated one of America’s most distinguished families.   “Elegant . . . moving . . . In Epstein’s hands, the case of Benjamin and William Franklin becomes superbly illuminating.”- The New Republic “A fully immersive experience [that] illuminates the tangled family relationships of one of the pillars of the American Revolution.”- Library Journal