The Loyalist’s Wife
The historical reality behind Elaine Cougler’s excellent pair of novels, The Loyalist’s Wife and The Loyalist’s Luck, is one that many Americans, even today, do not recognize: a substantial majority of the revolutionary era population was either indifferent or outright opposed to a political separation from Great Britain.
Two such colonists in Cougler’s novels are John and Lucy, a young couple in the largely frontier territory of New York State. When John decides, in The Loyalist’s Wife, to enlist in the royal forces to fight the rebels, Lucy is left alone in an unsettled land prowled by bands of reavers loyal to no cause except their own profit. And in The Loyalist’s Luck, the couple must do what thousands of loyalists did once the success of the Revolution was clear: flee to Canada with as much of their old possessions as they could hastily muster and attempt to start a new life there. Since John’s new life involves yet another military mission far from home, Lucy is again forced to rely on her own resources to survive. Indeed, these two books are more a portrait of her character and determination than anything else, although as a very vivid dramatization of a lesser-known aspect of the American Revolution, these two novels are also strongly recommended.
