Treacherous Beauty: Mark Jacob & Stephen Case

Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, the Woman Behind Benedict Arnold's Plot to Betray America by Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case.

In order to secure readership, many books dealing with history need titles which hint at an alluring degree of female seductiveness and deceit.  In fact, this book is a well-researched historical study of the marriage between Peggy Shippen and Benedict Arnold.

In historical terms, Arnold will always be an ambiguous figure. 
American school texts portray him as a traitor to early revolutionaries. Conversely, the British view him as a trustworthy subject of the English king.  As with so much of life, there can be no definitive answer; viewpoints depend on a reader’s individual societal background and framework. At any rate, this book explains Arnold’s reasons for his change in loyalties, consequent to what he viewed as an unwarranted court martial.  

As to his wife Peggy, while she clearly knew, supported and seems to have facilitated his plan, she was far from those seductive enchantresses portrayed in history and literature as undermining the honor of those men they enthrall.  Instead, she was a wife, remaining loyal after enduring the hurt of infidelity, a concerned and devoted mother, and in the end, a widow, struggling through her last days with meager support from anyone. 

Over-all, Treacherous Beauty, the first biography to have been written about this Peggy Shippen Arnold, combines absorbing characterizations with a new and unexplored avenue of understanding. 

All the Way Home by Bookey Peek

This delightful book chronicles Bookey and Richard Peeks’ experiences in running a wildlife sanctuary.  Much of their work centers on helping injured birds and animals, or those who have been abandoned while too young to look after themselves.  
The Peeks’ goal is to prepare them to return to their natural habitats.  
Though feeling some sadness when this occurs, they respect its necessity.  As Ms. Peek writes, the most punitive act we as a society can inflict upon another, aside from a sentence of death, is continuous confinement.  This pertains as much to bird and animal lives as it does to those of human beings. 
She also recounts the habits and despicable manners of some guests to the sanctuary.  Arguably, to the best of their understanding, many creatures from the wild behave with a greater degree of grace and decorum than do some of their human counterparts.  

War Brides by Lois Battle

War Bride 1943 London

Nearly always, I read nonfiction, unless a novel is suggested by a friend with similar interests.  Thus, it was by accident that I began Lois Battle’s novel War Brides.  Hurrying through a bookstore, I bought it on the basis that the subject sounded intriguing. 

While not a war bride myself, I left my home in France to marry a delightful Englishman, and have never felt the slightest regret. Still, we both needed to adapt to each other in subtle but definite ways, both emotional and cultural.

At any rate, so absorbed did I become in War Brides that, for days it lay open on my bedside table; I did not look at its title page. Then, given the interweaving of lives and the realistic but magnificent dialogue, I took a look at its title page which identified it as a novel.  By then, I was too intrigued by the book to close it due to its being fiction.

War Brides chronicles the lives in America of three brides who left Australia for America, often after the briefest of WWII courtships.  Once the enchantment of candlelight fades, each partner in every such marriage must deal with the less than enchanting aspects of someone they had almost deified in the flow of their fantasies. 

When dreams and champagne are damaged by defeats and the lowest grade beer and wine, each couple is forced to evaluate whether it is worthwhile to continue their impetuous unions.