Shadow Patriots

I found it difficult to get into Lucia St. Clair Robson's novel about the American Revolution Shadow Patriots (#41).  Frankly, I found it rather vulgar.  I stuck with it, though, because it was this month's Literary Circle book and not only was Lucia Robson speaking at a luncheon I was attending, but she had also agreed to meet with the members of the Literary Circle afterwards for a private discussion.  The pressure was on, even though I took a detour through the last two books I posted on before I finished this one.  It did pick up about halfway through and I wound up learning a few interesting facts about the Revolution.

If you ever have a chance to attend one of Ms. Robson's talks, I would highly recommend it.  She's a very entertaining speaker and was a real pleasure to talk to during our Literary Circle meeting.  I wish I had known before I heard her that all of her novels (there are ten of them, and she won the Golden Spur award for Western writing for her first book.) are based on real people and events.  She sprinkles her pages with odd facts, quotes and anecdotes she has found in her researches.  I might have read the book differently if I had known that all the essentials were factual. 

The book deals with espionage during the Revolutionary War on both sides and the role of the Quakers during the war.  Since they were pacifists, Quakers were frequently regarded as hostiles by both the British and the Americans.  How this played out for several specific Quakers is at the heart of this book, and something I had never really thought about before.  Several members of our group did not see the final plot twist coming.  Knowing it was real makes the ending even more poignant.  


My advice?  Stick to the "100 Page Rule" for reading this book.  If you make it through the first hundred pages, you'll probably be intrigued enough to continue on with it.  (Which is ironic, since when I mentioned this at Literary Circle, Ms. Robson told me that for her, it's the "50 Page Rule"!)  You may be interested enough in what you learn to keep on digging.