THE FIFTH OF MARCH

Carefully researched and lovingly written, Rinaldi's latest presents a girl indentured to John and Abigail Adams during the tense period surrounding the 1770 Massacre. Like the author's other protagonists, Rachel is seeking her place in a turbulent world. Inspired by Abigail Adams's gentility and intellectual achievement to educate herself, she's befriended by people involved in the increasing resistance to British authority, questions her own loyalties, and comes to accept herself as one of the new ``Americans''; after meeting Matthew Kilroy, a lonely British private, she also realizes that the rowdy Bostonians aren't always right. Risking her position, she secretly ``steps out'' with Matthew and eventually witnesses his participation in the Massacre (which was provoked by the Patriots, as Rinaldi suggests in an excellent historical note). After John Adams successfully defends the British soldiers and ends Rachel's indenture (he deems her actions unsuitable for a nursemaid), she secures work with Philadelphia Quakers, abandons her dowry, and sets out, secure in having learned to make choices and speak up for herself. Fortuitously timed, a novel that illuminates a moment from our past that has strong parallels to recent events in Los Angeles and Somalia. Bibliography. (Nonfiction. 10+)