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For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution
by Molly Beer
A women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton's influential sister-in-law.
Few women of the American Revolution have come through 250 years of US history with such clarity and color as Angelica Schuyler Church. She was Alexander Hamilton's "saucy" sister-in-law, and the heart of Thomas Jefferson's "charming coterie" of artists and salonnières in Paris. Her transatlantic network of important friends spanned the political spectrum of her time and place, and her astute eye and brilliant letters kept them well informed.
A woman of great influence in a time of influential women (Catherine the Great and Marie-Antoinette were contemporaries), Angelica was at the red-hot center of American history at its birth: in Boston, when General Burgoyne surrendered to the revolutionaries; in Newport, receiving French troops under the command of her soon-to-be dear friend Marquis de Lafayette; in Yorktown, just after the decisive battle; in Paris and London, helping to determine the standing of the new nation on the world stage.
She was born as Engeltje, a Dutch-speaking, slave-owning colonial girl who witnessed the Stamp Act riots in the Royal British Province of New York. She came of age under English rule as Angelica, the eldest daughter of the most important family on the northern part of Hudson's River, raised to be a domestic diplomat responsible for hosting indigenous chiefs and enemy British generals at dinner. She was Madame Church, wife of a privateer turned merchant banker, whose London house was a refuge for veterans of the American war fleeing the guillotine in France. Across nationalities, languages, and cultures, across the divides of war, grievance, and geography, Angelica wove a web of soft-power connections that spanned the War for Independence, the post-war years of tenuous peace, and the turbulent politics and rival ideologies that threatened to tear apart the nascent United States
In this enthralling and revealing woman's-eye view of a revolutionary era, Molly Beer breathes vibrant new life into a period usually dominated by masculine themes and often dulled by familiarity. In telling Angelica's story, she illuminates how American women have always plied influence and networks for political ends, including the making of a new nation.
"Engaging…Beer draws on abundant archival sources to portray a shrewd, observant woman whose perspective affords a fresh look at her times. A brisk and vivid history." —Kirkus Reviews
"In this rich and generous biography, Molly Beer uses an extra large canvas to paint a portrait of one of the most notable women of the Revolutionary era. Angelica Schuyler Church was everywhere, and in following the course of her remarkable life Beer fills in the backgrounds of the places she called home, from the very Dutch Albany of the 1750s to New York, London, and Paris. Along the way, we see a nation come into being as one of its founding women adroitly negotiates the social and political landscape." ―Russell Shorto, author of Taking Manhattan and Revolution Song
"For far too long the grand tapestry of America's journey to independence has foregrounded fathers and sons while keeping the women in the shadows. Molly Beer's biography of Angelica Schuyler Church is a vital corrective, bringing to life an extraordinary woman whose modern persona as Alexander Hamilton's friend and sister-in-law was only the beginning of her story." ―Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess and A World on Fire
"Richly detailed, sharply observed, and surprising, Angelica offers a fresh vision of characters and events often obscured by our preconceptions." —Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and Servants of the Map
"A fresh, arresting history of the American Revolution as people lived it: facing forward. Molly Beer recovers the suspense, perils, and dazzling possibilities of the era, and her lapidary prose and keen sense of character bring Angelica Schuyler Church, her family, and her world to vivid, unforgettable life, making a great global event into a family drama, and vice versa." —Jane Kamensky, president of Monticello/The Thomas Jefferson Foundation and author of A Revolution in Color
This information about Angelica was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Raised on a farm in the town of Angelica, New York, Molly Beer is an award-winning nonfiction writer interested in history, women, politics, and place. She teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Angelica
by Molly Beer
A women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton's influential sister-in-law.
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