Review: The Traitor's Wife: The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold and the Plan to Betray America by Allison Pataki

Title: The Traitor's Wife: The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold and the Plan to Betray America
Author: Allison Pataki
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Howard Books
Publish Date: January 1, 2014
Source: Owned

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Socialite Peggy Shippen is half Benedict Arnold's age when she seduces the war hero during his stint as military commander of Philadelphia. Blinded by his young bride's beauty and wit, Arnold does not realize that she harbors a secret: loyalty to the British. Nor does he know that she hides a past romance with the handsome British spy John Andre. Peggy watches as her husband, crippled from battle wounds and in debt from years of service to the colonies, grows ever more disillusioned with his hero, Washington, and the American cause. Together with her former love and her disaffected husband, Peggy hatches the plot to deliver West Point to the British and, in exchange, win fame and fortune for herself and Arnold."

My Two Cents:

"The Traitor's Wife" is the story of Clara, a maid to Peggy Shippen, who becomes Peggy Arnold, wife of Benedict Arnold, quite possibly the United States' greatest traitor. I hardly knew anything about Peggy Arnold and was intrigued about reading about what the wife of such an infamous man was like. Turns out, while she's fascinating, she is one of the "bad guys," too. Peggy is pretty terrible but she's a character that you love to hate and this makes the book really entertaining. When we first meet her, Peggy isn't worried about the American Revolution. She really doesn't care about it but just hopes that it doesn't ruin all of the parties that she wants to go to. She's obsessed with minor things like the latest fashions and what handsome man she is going to sidle up to next. It was amazing how little she cared about the world around her, which makes it easy to see why she was so easily swayed to help Benedict do what he did. The writing of the book was okay. I liked how it was written and I liked how the author foreshadowed the traitorous behavior to come later on in the book. I did have a bit of an issue with Clara, Peggy's maid. I understand the choice to tell the story through the eyes of Clara instead of perhaps the eyes of Peggy or Benedict. Clara is an innocuous character. She's nice enough but is a little bit flat throughout the book, which made it difficult to connect to her and care about her story outside of how it related to the Arnolds. She feels very much like only a conduit to telling the story rather than a stand alone character.