In September 1776, the vulnerable Continental Army under an unsure George Washington (who had never commanded a large force in battle) evacuates New York after a devastating defeat by the British Army. Three weeks later, near the Canadian border, one of his favorite generals, Benedict Arnold, miraculously succeeds in postponing the British naval advance down Lake Champlain that might have ended the war. Four years later, as the book ends, Washington...

Longing for reward and recognition, American Major General Benedict Arnold turns traitor as he plots with British Major John Andre to help the British win the Revolutionary War.

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 André. Peggy watches as her husband, crippled from battle wounds and in debt from years of service to the colonies,...

"Explores in colonial Newport, Rhode Island, the tumultuous marriage of Benedict and Mary Arnold in the 1720s and 1730s. In and through their sordid and possibly criminal marital story, in which Mary is accused of poisoning Benedict, Crane sheds light on the liabilities and possibilities for women under couverture, the complex social and economic networks that bound together the elite and laboring classes of Newport, and the trans-oceanic cultures...