REBELLION 1776

A girl fends for herself in Revolutionary War–era Boston.

Boston, 1776: 13-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper, a kitchen maid for a British loyalist judge, hunkers down during the chaos of George Washington’s violent siege on Boston. When the British are driven out and Elspeth’s sailmaker father—her only surviving family member after her mother and siblings died from smallpox—goes missing, Elsbeth is left to navigate an uncertain future on her own. She finds employment with former Patriot spy Mister Pike and his family, who have moved into the judge’s vacated home. Elsbeth is once more a maid, this time to the six Pike children and Hannah Sparhawk, the family’s sharp-witted, highborn charge. With the help of best friend Shubel Kent, Elsbeth searches for Pappa even as the city is ravaged by an explosion in smallpox numbers and a new government forms amid talk of independence. As she cares for the Pike family during their recovery from smallpox inoculation, Elsbeth must protect her own interests against outside forces, including the Pikes’ bitter housekeeper and a disreputable acquaintance of her father’s, all the while forming a friendship with Hannah and staying true to herself. Told through Elsbeth’s clever, feminist, often-humorous perspective, this original and timely story immerses readers in her observations on an epidemic and vaccination, early American politics and society, and the meaning of family. The main characters are white; the book contains references to enslaved people.

Engrossing, entertaining, and heartfelt.