RENSSELAERVILLE — John Gordon, a 68-year-old veteran living in Medusa, believes that young people need to have a better understanding of history. It’s one of the reasons he has written about a turning point in American history, and intends to continue to write on his theme of liberty in an infant nation.

“Liberty’s Flight” is a historical novel set in the Colonial era, beginning in 1747. The main character survives the Battle of Culloden, between Britain and the Scottish Jacobites that wiped out the Scots, said Gordon. The main character flees to the American colonies, he said, and eventually becomes involved in the French and Indian War.

Gordon said that the book will kick off the first in a series. He is already working on the next book, “Liberty’s Seedling,” set in the French and Indian War and involving the building of the Continental Army, before writing a book about the Revolutionary War. Though he does not want to decide now how many books he will write in the series, he hopes to end the series over 100 years later in the midst of the Civil War, following the Battle of Gettysburg and the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. The theme of the struggle for freedom, said Gordon, will transfer from the colonies to the enslaved by that point.

The Hilltowner has woven fictional characters with real ones and real events in his book. To do that, Gordon traveled to places like Fort William Henry in Lake George, the Old Stone Fort in Schoharie, and Fort Ticonderoga in the Adirondacks. At Fort Ticonderoga, he spoke with a leader of the reenactment military band there, and at Fort William Henry he found part of the original structure at an area outside the museum and reconstructed fort.

Gordon is also working with the Old Stone Fort to provide lumber for a structure there, he said.

Gordon himself is a Vietnam War veteran and comes from a long line of veterans going back to the Revolutionary War. His father — also a writer — fought in World War II, including as one of the famous “Flying Tigers” in China, and his son is now serving in the United States Air Force, operating ski-planes around the world.

He is retired from Department of Corrections after working there for 22 years in the information technology department. Prior to that, he had enlisted in the United States Coast Guard in 1967, where he served in the Western Pacific and also traveled as far as to Antarctica.

Gordon’s goal in writing his book is to “set the record straight” on United States history.

“I think that it will give a lot of people entertaining information that they may have not known,” he said.

Gordon is in the final stages of self-publishing “Liberty’s Flight” using the services of Covenant Books. He is currently working on establishing a publisher’s cataloging in-publication, or PCIP, code, which creates a record of the work, according to Library of Congress Publications. Following that, he hopes to sell it both online and in stores.