The Belle of Chatham by Laura Frantz

 

Title:  The Belle of Chatham

Author:  Laura Frantz

Narrated by:  Pilar Witherspoon

Publisher: Recorded Books

Length: Approximately 12 hours and 22 minutes

Source: Physical review copy from @laurafrantzauthor @revellfiction @greatreadsbookpromo and audio review copy from @NetGalley.  Thank-you!

Do you have a favorite movie, show, or book that features the Revolutionary War?  I enjoyed the Kent Family chronicles series by John Jakes when I was a teenager.

Maebel and Coralie Bohannon live in the small town of Chatham, New Jersey. When American soldiers arrive, they open their home to American officers.  Coralie is enraged as she is a loyalist who is secretly engaged to a British lieutenant, Eben Gibbs.  Eben grew up in Chatham, but his family left and moved to New York City as the revolution broke out.  Mae and Coralie’s brothers are fighting on the American side.  Mae finds herself attracted to American general Rhys Harlow, who is staying with them.  She finds herself torn between her patriotism, growing love for the general, and her sister.  Will Mae find true love while also keeping the love of her sister?

My thoughts on this novel:

·       This novel was set in 1777 during the American Revolutionary War.

·       I loved the quotes at the start of each chapter from historical figures from the Revolutionary War.  It was a perfect read for the 250^th anniversary of the United States this year.

·       This novel had great themes such as romance, espionage, family bonds, sisters, and forgiveness.

·       I took turns reading the physical book and listening to the audiobook for this one.  The narrator was great.  Both formats were wonderful for this intriguing story.

·       There are not enough books about the Revolutionary War, and I was happy to read about it.  I also loved the real-life historical figures that were in the story, such as George Washington, and the facts, events, and battles

·       This was a Christian book and featured clean romance.

·       Mae was a strong character and stayed true to her believes and doing what was right.  I loved the romance and relationship between Mae and Rhys.

·       I enjoyed the side characters as well, especially Lucy.  Lucy is a forthright person who is there when Mae really needs her.

·       I have enjoyed every Laura Frantz book that I have read.  She writes excellent historical fiction with detail to bring me into that time period and also writes fascinating characters, moral dilemma, and romance.  I really need to read Frantz’s backlog. 

·       The tension between the two sisters felt real and palpable.  I loved this relationship and wish we had more follow-up with Coralie at the end.

·       The epilogue was great. 

Overall, The Belle of Chatham by Laura Frantz was an excellent historical romance set during the Revolutionary War with unforgettable characters, espionage, family drama, and forgiveness.

The Patriots: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America by Winston Groom (TLC Book Tours)

 

I love history.  I’ve loved to read biographies and non-fiction history since I was a child.  As Veteran’s day comes around in November, I love to read about early American history.  The Patriots was a very interesting read about the founding of the United States.

 Author Winston Groom focuses on three of the major people who worked to found our nation and make it is what it is today:  Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams.  The first three chapters tackle each of the three men and gives their early history through the American Revolution.  In alternating chapters after that, the book details how the men helped in their own unique way to build the country after winning the revolution.  There is also a great center section of pictures showing paintings of the men and where they lived.

 I enjoyed The Patriots.  Groom was able to put together an interesting and very readable book that highlights the major accomplishments and trials of these three founding fathers.  I have often pondered about how such uncommon individuals were able to all be together at exactly the right time in our history.  This book tells how these three grew into the men they became and were able to create “a more just and promising world.”

 Favorite Quotes:

“A man of striking intelligence, remarkable presence, and driving ambition, Alexander Hamilton tried to outrun his unpropitious beginnings most of his life.”

 “It wasn’t only his writing ability but his reasoning ability that allowed Hamilton to achieve what Washington described as ‘thinking as one.’”

 “John Adams was obnoxious.  He said so himself.  He talked too much and wrote that he wished he didn’t.  He was irritable and wished he wasn’t.  He did not suffer fools glad (and his notion of a fool was set at a very low bar).  But he was brilliant and well-read and energetic to a fault – ‘a great-hearted, persevering man of uncommon ability and force . . . He was hones and everyone knew it.’”

 “Thomas Jefferson was a true Renaissance man.”

 Overall, The Patriots is a good history of three important men from very different backgrounds and how they were able to compromise to bring out country to fruition.

 Book Source: A Review from Hachette Book Group as part of the TLC Book Tour.  More more stops on this tour, check out this link.

 About The Patriots  

• Hardcover: 464 pages

• Publisher: National Geographic (November 3, 2020) 

 In this masterful narrative, Winston Groom brings his signature storytelling panache to the tale of our nation's most fascinating founding fathers--Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams--painting a vivid picture of the improbable events, bold ideas, and extraordinary characters who created the United States of America. 

When the Revolutionary War ended in victory, there remained a stupendous problem: establishing a workable democratic government in the vast, newly independent country. Three key founding fathers played significant roles: John Adams, the brilliant, dour New Englander; Thomas Jefferson, the aristocratic Southern renaissance man; and Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant from the Caribbean island of Nevis. In this riveting narrative, best-selling author Winston Groom illuminates these men as the patriots fundamentally responsible for the ideas that shaped the emerging United States. Their lives could not have been more different, and their relationships with each other were often rife with animosity. And yet they led the charge--two of them creating and signing the Declaration of Independence, and the third establishing a national treasury and the earliest delineation of a Republican party. The time in which they lived was fraught with danger, and their achievements were strained by vast antagonisms that recall the intense political polarization of today. But through it all, they managed to shoulder the heavy mantle of creating the United States of America, putting aside their differences to make a great country. Drawing on extensive correspondence, Groom shares the remarkable story of the beginnings of our great nation. 

 

Purchase Links

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About Winston Groom

WINSTON GROOM was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Mobile, Alabama, on the Gulf Coast. After a brief period in the Army, Groom returned to Washington, where he worked as a reporter at the Washington Star, covering the political and court beat. He enjoyed a stint in New York City, befriending and socializing with literary legends before returning to Alabama, where he settled down to writing and enjoying life. He is the author of 18 previous books, including Forrest Gump and The Aviators.

My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

Alexander Hamilton’s legacy would have sadly been left by the wayside if not for the work of his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton.  A brave woman in her own right, Eliza was the daughter of a Major General, adopted by the Oneida tribe, the mother of eight children, and founder of two orphanages in New York City.  She helped her husband with his work and if anything was his “right hand” woman.  Eliza finally gets her own story told in a splendid new historical fiction novel, My Dear Hamilton.

My Dear Hamilton tells Eliza’s story from her teenage years until her death with the major focus being on her turbulent life with Alexander Hamilton.  Their great love endured even with the first major political sex scandal and the untimely death of their son.  

I love reading historical fiction and it’s always a delight to read historical fiction on America’s past.  I’ve read America’s First Daughter by the same authors and have enjoyed that as well.  I love listening to the music from the musical Hamilton and would love to see it live.  Authors Dray and Kamoie love the musical as well and it was the musical that inspired them to write the book from Eliza’s point of view.  

I really liked how the story was framed with an elderly Eliza receiving a visit from former President James Monroe.  The book gave a history to their story together and why Eliza would not forgive him.

I really enjoyed that the novel included the Oneida people and how they were affiliated with Eliza’s family, America’s struggle for freedom, and with Alexander Hamilton himself as he started a school for the tribe.  It was poignant towards the end of the book when Marquis de Lafayette came to visit and asked about the tribe only to be told they had been driven out.  Part of the tribe is actually not far from me in Green Bay.  They traveled through the Great Lakes and found a new homeland in Wisconsin, but it’s still a struggle today for the tribe to keep their tribal land.

Slavery is also a side story in the book with Eliza’s family owning slaves.  I always forget that people did own slaves in the North at the start of our country.  For example, poet Phyllis Wheatly was a slave in New York City.  Eliza and multiple founding fathers struggle with this issue. The authors discuss at the end of the book in their note that the revolutionary war wasn’t just fought by white men in powdered wigs, there were people of all races involved.  I appreciated that real look at history.

The book really brought the founding fathers alive and how they all struggle and had issues with each other.  One thing I’ve found personally interesting is that in books, movies, and the musical, it’s always framed that Hamilton is a hero and Jefferson a villain or Jefferson is the hero and Hamilton is a villain.  I think it was much greyer than that.  Both men did a lot to create our country and make it what it is today, and both men were far from perfect with great sins of their own to contemplate.

As a wife and mother, I’ll admit, I had a hard time with Eliza’s forgiveness of Hamilton after the affair was discovered before his death.  I don’t know if I could be that forgiving.  I liked that after Hamilton’s death, Eliza struggled a lot after she read through his personal correspondence wondering if he had loved her after all and had a very hard time forgiving him.  It wasn’t until after a candid talk with Lafayette that she could learn to move on and love the man he was even with all of his flaws.

Lafayette’s trip later in life back to America was riveting to read about.  I also was amazed that in her eighties Eliza traveled to the wilds of Wisconsin to visit her son.  I can’t imagine in that time period traveling out to that far and returning when in your eighties!  

I LOVED the extras as the back of the book.  It included a note from the author about the actual history the book was based on, discussion questions, a conversation with the authors, and how the book differs from the musical.

Favorite Quotes:

“Forgetting would lift the weighty cloak of the past from my shoulders and make the present so much easier.  But memory unalterably sets our compass and guides us down paths we might have preferred never to have walked at all.”

“As if the notion that all men were created equal somehow meant that one need not aspire to knowledge and ability – all distinctions of class, breeding, or merit discarded, all notions of civility deserted.”

“I hadn’t married a man.  I’d married a mythic hero who’d driven a carriage of the sun across the sky.  No other husband could ever measure up against my dear Hamilton, and it would be cruel to make any man try.”

“He was not a perfect man.  But he was a great one.  It is only plain justice that his wife should remember him better.  And his country, too.”

“It seems, to me that the only just way to judge a person is by the sum of their deeds, good and bad.”

Overall, My Dear Hamilton was a riveting read about one of our nation’s founding mothers and the start of our country. What makes a person remembered and can they still be a good person even with serious flaws?

Book Source:  Review Copy from William Morrow.  Thank-you!