Linda J Collins, Dreams of Revolution (BookBaby 2021)
1777 Hopewell, Pennsylvania
15-year-old Rachel Palsgrove sneaks around the side of the furnace to peek in the window. Inside her father is molding iron—at night.
Rachel’s wealthier friend Susanna dreams of living in a mansion. Rachel’s mother is anxious for her to find a beau, but she dreams of becoming a teacher. She goes to Philadelphia in hopes of studying at the university, defying the gentlemen-only rule, but it is closed due to the British occupation of the city.
While waiting for news from the college, she is brutalised by a British spy and is betrayed by her best friend. She makes a daring midnight ride (actually three days) to warn Patriots in Hopewell of an impending British raid and, while her beau is imprisoned, becomes a spy for General Washington.
I loved the references to historical American Revolution espionage, rich material for intrigue. The system—coded messages in invisible ink and coloured laundry on the line—is the same as the one historically used by Washington’s spies the Culper Ring. Rachel sweet-talks Captain Crammond the way Peggy Shippen groomed Benedict Arnold. And real historical figures like John André come into the story.
We meet the characters in the course of their daily lives, giving us an opportunity to learn about early American lifestyles—making soap, making coal, predicting the weather by looking at the colour of the ‘woolies’ (brown bears’) fur, getting letters to relatives in other towns, the wedding customs, etc.
I think we could have had an earlier indication that war with Britain is looming, some hints at how the characters felt about their colonial masters, perhaps. Rachel finally finds out what the men were making—cannons, defying the Iron Act—but we don’t see any Redcoats until chapter 20. I wish we could have reached the exciting bit, Mr Morris and Jesse’s arrest, earlier in the story.
I bought this book because my sister lives in modern-day Hopewell, and I love anything having to do with revolution.
Contains a rape, but it’s not graphic.
Susie Helme 
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