A LADY

In Honegger’s historical novel, a young 18th-century Englishwoman visits the colonies and finds herself in sympathy with the colonists’ desire for freedom.

It is fall in 1777, and 19-year-old Mary Hannah André is restless, “tired of being nothing but a pretty doll, a flirtatious distraction for the men she [encounters] at parties.” Chafing against the constraints of English society and familial expectations that she find a suitable husband, Mary convinces her mother to let her journey to the colonies to visit her brother, John, a British officer stationed in Philadelphia. Once there, she begins to venture out on her own and observes the capricious and brutal British mistreatment of the colonists. One morning, following an argument with John, she rises early and dresses comfortably for a solitary ride into the countryside to sort out her thoughts. Thus begins an unanticipated adventure that will change her life. Lost during a snowstorm, she comes across a battlefield strewn with mutilated colonial bodies. She is then set upon by two Redcoat deserters, one of whom slashes her thigh while attempting to rape her. Fortunately, she is rescued by Major Benjamin Tallmadge, of the Second Continental Light Dragoons, and taken to the Continental Army camp, where she remains under Tallmadge’s protection, ultimately joining George Washington’s Culper Ring spy network. Honegger’s historical novel is both a love story and a tale of espionage, painting vivid portraits of high society in Philadelphia under British rule and of the harsh, impoverished conditions in the Continental Army encampments. Her prose carries the lilt of a romance novel—from time to time, she strays into such effusive metaphoric constructions as: “She breathed the words, chewing on them in her mouth before swallowing them into her memory.” Honegger’s fanciful, hypothetical version of Mary André—who, historically, was indeed the sister of Captain John André in King George’s army—is a spirited, engaging protagonist, bringing readers directly into the intriguing spy games and up close to the colonial luminaries of the day.

Atmospheric and entertaining, generously peppered with historical tidbits.