Book One of the Back Rooms That Shaped America. 1772-1776. In pre-revolution Boston, the Green Dragon Tavern is more than a room-it's a weaponized address. Its widowed owner keeps ledgers, locks, and loyalties balanced while the city's air turns brittle. Upstairs, familiar faces pass through in careful cameos-Samuel Adams with organizer's gravity, John Hancock with money and theater, Paul Revere with courier urgency-each reminding the tavernkeeper that neutrality is becoming a form of collaboration.
As tea talk hardens into action, the Green Dragon becomes a launch point for a night of disguises and dockside silence-the Boston Tea Party felt as logistics and risk, not legend. Meanwhile, a polite British investigator maps the tavern's patterns, and one coerced "accounting hand" discovers that every private moment can become intelligence.
