A review by exlibrisbitsy
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke by Sally Cabot Gunning
4.0
This historical novel takes place on the eve of the American Revolution. Jane is a young woman who lives in a world that is more in flux than she realizes. Families are facing off against families, revolutionaries against loyalists and even father against daughter as Jane questions her father’s beliefs and actions and ultimately decides to not marry the man he has picked out for her.
This results in her being sent to Boston to care for a sick aunt. While there she realizes things are not quite how they appear in the papers. The story unfolds as Jane rejects how other people tell her how she should think about and feel about the political climate at the time and determines that she will come to her own conclusions.
Because Jane is not falling along party lines in a traditional manner it allows the reader to see things as they truly were in the Colonial era and that includes some of the hypocrisy and imperfect deeds on both sides of the coming war. A lot of the stereotypes and generalizations are discarded for true historical accuracy. The revolution was not perfect. Neither were our fore fathers. It's a little ridiculous to think that it all was perfect. This book embraces that and yet still gives a great deal of respect and weight to the reasons we went forward with the revolution anyway, warts and all. I appreciated this honesty.
I also loved how the author wrote the book so that the story arc of this one young woman and her personal rebellion and search for truth in the midst of the much greater rebellion going on around her worked so well as an analogy to everything that was happening in the country at that time. Jane was a wonderful, strong character to read about and I was impressed by her determination and fortitude as she stood up for what she believed in throughout even when her number of supporters started to dwindle by the end.
I did find it a little hard to get into the story at first, but by the half way point I was hooked and pulled right through to the end. Fans of historical novels will enjoy this book immensely.
I received this book for free to review.
This results in her being sent to Boston to care for a sick aunt. While there she realizes things are not quite how they appear in the papers. The story unfolds as Jane rejects how other people tell her how she should think about and feel about the political climate at the time and determines that she will come to her own conclusions.
Because Jane is not falling along party lines in a traditional manner it allows the reader to see things as they truly were in the Colonial era and that includes some of the hypocrisy and imperfect deeds on both sides of the coming war. A lot of the stereotypes and generalizations are discarded for true historical accuracy. The revolution was not perfect. Neither were our fore fathers. It's a little ridiculous to think that it all was perfect. This book embraces that and yet still gives a great deal of respect and weight to the reasons we went forward with the revolution anyway, warts and all. I appreciated this honesty.
I also loved how the author wrote the book so that the story arc of this one young woman and her personal rebellion and search for truth in the midst of the much greater rebellion going on around her worked so well as an analogy to everything that was happening in the country at that time. Jane was a wonderful, strong character to read about and I was impressed by her determination and fortitude as she stood up for what she believed in throughout even when her number of supporters started to dwindle by the end.
I did find it a little hard to get into the story at first, but by the half way point I was hooked and pulled right through to the end. Fans of historical novels will enjoy this book immensely.
I received this book for free to review.