Traitors & Spies

A review of The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki

"If you can't break the rules, you might as well seduce the man who makes them," - Peggy Shippen, The Traitor's Wife.

In a sprawling tale reminiscent of a Shakespearean epic, author Allison Pataki weaves historical fact with fiction seamlessly. Both the characters that existed in the era of the American Revolutionary War in reality, and those that she created, shine and leap off of the page. As a long-term fan of both historical fiction and the Revolutionary War period, this book was a truly delightful read for me!

This novel tells the story of Clara Bell, lady's maid to the wealthy Peggy Shippen. Clara serves Peggy for much of her life, and as a result witnesses Peggy's relationships with both the charming British spy master, Major John Andre, and the bold Patriot, Major Benedict Arnold. Clara is also witness to Peggy's demanding and darker side, one that her mistress cleverly buries beneath fine silk gowns and simpering smiles.

It is this darker side that drives Peggy to seduce Benedict Arnold and convince him to turn his back on the country he once served. Clara, whom the story is largely centered around, is thrust into this treasonous plan as well. Secretly a patriot, Clara is forced to hatch a plan of her own to counter her mistress's actions - one that could save the life of none other than George Washington himself, all while putting herself in great danger.

In addition to watching the character of Clara Bell grow and blossom throughout the book, I was delighted by the romantic aspect of the novel as well - particularly where Clara was concerned. It was sweet without being cheesy, and quite honestly warmed my heart.

Alongside protagonist Clara Bell, the other character that spends a lot of the time in the spotlight of this novel is her mistress, Peggy Shippen. Having watched the AMC series Turn: Washington's Spies prior to reading this novel, I was delighted to see that the portrayals of Miss Shippen lined up almost perfectly. She's a character that you love to hate, and yet cannot help but pity. I wish that I could've gotten to know her character a little better in this book, as there are a lot of questions I have about her actions. Was her desire to turn Benedict Arnold into a traitor simply an experiment for her; a way for her to test how far a man would be willing to go to serve her? Were her actions driven by her passionate memories of her time spent in the arms of John Andre? Or were they simply born from a selfish desire to have the most beautiful things, which she believed only the British monarch could provide?

The main issues that I had with this book were the timing and the fact that a lot of actions, especially those of Clara, were very redundant - almost to the point where Clara became, at times, a boring character that I was tired of reading about (which is awkward, considering she's the main character in this story...).

As far as timing goes, the issues that I had with it surrounded the length of the chapters, and the paragraph breaks. The chapters were extremely long, with huge leaps in time taking place in a single chapter. These were typically nicely divided into sections, but that was not always the case. There were times when I would find myself having to back and re-read, only to find out that there was a time skip, and events happening a mere paragraph apart were actually taking place weeks, or sometimes years, after each other.

Now to the redundancy of Clara's actions. She's a lady's maid, which means that she sees a lot, but isn't privileged enough in order to take part in most of the events first-hand. Her favorite action seemed to be "lowering her eyes", which is not an interesting thing to hear about the protagonist of the story doing all the time, especially when she's the one that we're supposed to be learning about the most. In a way, I feel like the story would've been even more captivating had it been in first-person from Clara's point of view.

That being said, I did enjoy Clara's character development immensely. Her choices towards the end of the novel nearly had me cheering out loud!

I really enjoyed this book, and it was a nice return to the genre of historical fiction, which I haven't read in quite a while. This is definitely one that I recommend!

The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki - 4 out of 5 stars