John Smolens's The Schoolmaster's Daughter had been on my reading list for well over a year before I finally read it last week - and it was worth the wait.
This is the story of Boston's Lovell family, in the opening days of the American Revolution. The father is the well-respected schoolmaster of the Latin school (hence the title of the book) - and a devoted loyalist. His three children on the other hand, James, Abigail, and Benjamin, are avowed Americans - and known revolutionaries. This is particularly true of eldest son James, he of the slightly dodgy past and mysterious illness (which is oddly and annoyingly never explained) who pens many of the missives that drive the Revolution.
Primarily Schoolmaster's Daughter focuses on the parallel stories of Abigail, who alternately woos and spurns a British corporal and finds herself accused in the murder of a sargeant, and youngest brother Benjamin who slips through siege lines and fights in the early, hot battles in the countryside outside the city. The latter he does alongside Ezra Hammond, whom Abigail expected to wed until he left Boston without a word some months before the opening shots of the war - and whose own history is one of the most intricately woven pieces of the story.
Smolens has written a wonderful novel, replete with such larger-than-life characters as Paul Revere and his wife Rachel (conveniently Abigail's best friend) and General Thomas Gage who is friendly with the schoolmaster himself. Ultimately, the language and the events of the time so permeate the pages that the reader feels immersed in Revolutionary Boston and surprised to find herself, say, in a crowded airport.
Four stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment