What if Ben Franklin came back? What if everything depended on it? That is the starting point for Tom Fitzgerald’s tour de force that puts Ben Franklin on trial in a celestial court and then grants him his wish to come back to life in present day America. The stakes are high for our culture, and for this book alike. But Fitzgerald succeeds. Following in the traditions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, and nine years in the making, Poor Richard’s Lament is an intricately woven, ultimately uplifting tale of revelation and redemption. Those new to Ben Franklin and Ben Franklin aficionados alike will be delighted and inspired by this important but very funny book, which may indeed have an enormous impact on our times.

Tom Fitzgerald has served as a door-to-door salesman of home-study courses, a vocational counselor for adults and children with developmental disabilities, a stockbroker, the assistant to the president of a large health-care corporation, a lobbyist, a technical writer, a corporate manager, and a Navy UDT/SEAL during the Vietnam era. He is the author of three works of fiction: Chocolate Charlie, A Matter of Scents, and Chocolate Charlie Comes Home, as well as several works of nonfiction. He lives in New England with his wife of 44 years.