Mrs. Benedict Arnold
One of the most consequential and impassioned love stories of the American Revolution—and its tragic denouement—flutters off the page in Emma Parry’s subtly addictive Mrs. Benedict Arnold.
In 1777, the British redcoats march into Philadelphia in the second year of the colonialist’s War for Independence. One of the city’s eminent families, the Shippens, toes a fine line between Loyalists and Patriots, led by their sober and circumspect patriarch, Edward. Shippen’s youngest daughter, Peggy, is seventeen and wishes only for an end to hostilities. During the one-year occupation of the city, she meets and falls passionately in love (or lust?) with a handsome British intelligence officer, John André. Against the better advice of her parents, she flirts and spends time with this enigmatic man, who instructs her in the ways of invisible ink. But when the British are forced to evacuate the city in 1778 at the approach of Patriot General Benedict Arnold’s colonial army, her heart is heavy. But when Peggy and Benedict lay on eyes on each other at a local salon, the rest is (as they say) history.
Parry writes from Peggy’s perspective throughout, and it is this first-person view that allows Parry to suggest Peggy’s motives—both in love and in war. As Peggy interacts with family, friends, and acquaintances of varying allegiances, she suggests that Peggy’s “anxious nature” drives her to create certainty where none exists. It is a fascinating window into the young and impressionable teenager, one who admits to herself that “I was never such a Loyalist I had trouble seeing the merit in a Patriot.”
Pairing superb writing with sharp psychological insights, Mrs. Benedict Arnold tells America’s most infamous story of betrayal from Peggy’s perspective and never stops enchanting.
