Starts out really slow, picked up briefly, and then surprised me completely and got genuinely interesting. For the first three-quarters of the book, I was sure it barely merited 3 stars. ( )

I like Sally Gunning's writing style. She has a way of describing the area and making Satucket a likeable character.

While she was in Boston during the "bloody massacre" Gunning describes it in such a way that it brings the reader right along for a walk, seeing the little brats harass the soldier(s) and then....

I'd recommend the book. It's a quick, good read. But if you read this one, you need to read Bound and The Widow's War as well. =)
( )

Who knew? We have barely been taught anything about Crispus Attucks, a black man slain in the Boston Massacre, and now there's the hero Jane Whitehouse, herein known as Jane Clarke. Gunning is a genius at combining historical themes with modern sensibilities, and this is a suspenseful tale of the events leading up to the American Revolution. Jane is a native of Satucket (Brewster) on Cape Cod, the prized daughter of a mill owner who lives to please her father. And then, as a consequence of spurning a suitor her father favors for his potential role in his financial schemes, Jane is banished to Boston at the height of the redcoat occupation. Jane meets such towering colonials as Sam, Abigail, and John Adams, Henry Knox, and the tragic figure of James Otis, beaten so badly by British soldiers that he loses his mind. As she tries to find her place in the world without her family, Jane makes many difficult decisions and plays a critical role in the Boston Massacre trial. Such a stirring historical novel, with distinct feminist overtones.

Quotes: "She made her way over the gunwale with the assistance of a few well-placed and misplaced hands."

"Was this what gave her such an unfettered voice in that marriage? Perhaps part must come from a husband strong enough in himself to greet such life without attempting to beat it down, to silence it." ( )

Jane Clarke saves herself from a bad marriage and her father sends her to Boston where she's expected to nurse and wait on her aunt. She is miserable and ends up with Grandparents who have the best kind of marriage and the right politics. Good atmosphere of unease in the city (Boston Tea Party), good portrait of a woman with brains and what it was like for women at that time. No one is either all good nor fully bad. ( )

I probably would have given this four stars except for the following: the book has a distressing lack of closure when it really needed some (as opposed to certain books, movies, etc. that actually benefit from an open ending), and the main character never really came to a conclusion about her own feelings vis-a-vis the conflict between the American colonies and England.

That being said, the characters were mostly engaging and well drawn (other than Jane's suitor, Phinnie Paine, who's more an enigma than an actual person), and the dilemma Jane faces is a real one--how does she reconcile political rhetoric and philosophy with conflicting or contradictory events she witnesses? I find this especially relevant in our current political atmosphere, where too many people are casting the situations in black and white when they are really in varying shades of gray. ( )