During the American Revolution the “belle of Philadelphia”
was Miss Peggy Shippen. She was a haughty selfish beauty that was a royalist at
heart. Peggy was the type of girl that was beautiful but ugly on the inside.
Her maid Clara Bell was everything Peggy was not. Clara had recently lost her
grandmother and was taken into service by the Shippen family. Clara had been
given the hardest duty in the household and that was to keep Peggy happy.
Spoilt rotten to the core Peggy was a vain woman and cared nothing about
anything in life other than her pretty face, her elaborate dresses and her handsome
British beau major John Andre. Peggy’s lavish life style of fancy dinner
parties, gorgeous gowns, and dashing men in uniforms was all too much for
Clara. She felt completely overwhelmed with Peggy’s disillusioned world. Her
one and only comfort in her new employers home was the developing friendship
she had with a young man named Caleb that also worked for the shippen family. Clara
began to settle into her new life as Peggy’s maid and found it anything but
easy.
The Royalist had controlled Philadelphia at this time during
the revolution but nothing lasts forever and it was all about to come to an end.
The rebels infiltrated the royalist camp and forced the royalists including
Major John Andre to flee. In that instant Peggy’s idyllic life and heart
shattered into tiny little bits of hopelessness. Months later she was still broken hearted.
Eventually Peggy unenthusiastically welcomed the rebel forces and their commander
Benedict Arnold. A legendary war hero of
the revolution, Benedict had bravely fought for Washington and had suffered
greatly because of it. He had been wounded in the leg during battle and had
been in dire financial straights because the loyalist had not paid him for his
military services for years. Eventually Peggy came around after mourning the
loss of Andre. It was time to move on and since she was a vain woman she
realized Benedict Arnold was the only man in town with the means to satisfy her
financially. Twice her age and defiantly not her type Peggy pursued the general
and with her fathers permission married him even though she only marginally
loved him, it would never be a great love affair between them.
When Peggy was married Clara had been sent with Peggy’s new
household but finical circumstances arise for the newly married Arnold’s and
they got their first dose of reality in the form of poverty. Clara missed
nothing to do with Peggy because it was her job. She noticed her mistresses
decline and unhappiness it was not a shock to Clara that Peggy had concocted a crazy
plan to bring them back to wealth but all at the expense of betraying her
country and the men that her husband had faithfully served for so long. It
would take every trick Peggy ever learned to sway her husband into becoming a
traitor. Forced to just stand by and watch things unfold Clara loved her country
and she knew she had to do the right thing.
It was just like Peggy to be rotten but this was taking it to a whole
new level and Clara just snapped. She
had enough of selfish Peggy Shippen and no longer could she or would she just
stand by while two traitors destroyed her country.
4/5 Good read, a whole new time period for me this time
around. This is my first American Revolution historical fiction novel and I
really enjoyed it. What leaned me towards this read was the new TV series Turn,
I am hooked on Turn and many of the shows characters are featured in this
novel. It was a great introductory novel to the American Revolution. I would
highly recommend this novel to historical fiction lovers because it is a great
novel that is loosely based on real events.
PG-13 for mild violence and sexual references
FTC- This novel is from my personal collection.
Amazon:
THE TRAITOR'S WIFE by Allison Pataki
S T A Y C O N N E C T E D W I T H M E :
U T U B E ~
T W I T T E R ~
F A C E B O O K ~
I N S T A G R A M ~
G O O G L E +
~L I Z Z I E~
