by Ann Rinaldi
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SO THEN, my readers, you ask, is it all true, everything in the book? Did it all really happen that way?
Let me remind you, dear readers, that this is a work of historical fiction, which means I am fictionalizing what really did happen. Yes, Caty Littlefield really did grow up on Block Island, her mother did die when she was ten, she was sent to live with Aunt Catharine, she did meet Nathanael Greene, and he was twelve years older than she, all as I have written. But those are the facts! It is up to the writer to fill in the story, to tell how they imagine it happened.
And so I did, with part 1.
But then what about part 2?
I wanted to take the book further along. To tell the story of Cornelia, Caty's daughter, to tell of Caty's family.
When I read of how Caty's Aunt Catharine had supposedly had an affair with Benjamin Franklin and it caused so much gossip, of how beautiful Caty herself was, of how her enticing moods and her gaiety kept the men's spirits up at Valley Forge, I likened her to Aunt Catharine. And then I read of Caty's friendships, later in life, with other men, even after she was married to Nathanael. And I read how General Wayne kept coming around to visit her and Nathanael at their plantation in Georgia, a fact that generated more gossip, and I decided to make this all very uncomfortable for her daughter Cornelia.
And so I made the focus of the second part of the book the rumor that General Wayne is Cornelia's father, because she was conceived at Valley Forge and because she, Cornelia, is the only one who has hazel eyes, as has General Wayne.
Her sister Martha, who constantly vies with Cornelia for their father's love, plants this thought in Cornelia's mind to drive her crazy. And so the tension in the second part of the book takes off from there.
None of this really happened in the family of Nathanael Greene. It is pure fiction, and this great and good man had no part in it. It was put in for the sake of story. Of course, he always knew his wife was a flirt, but he put up with it, and as far as anyone knows they had a good marriage. As I say, I did it for the sake of story. It is well known, however, that General Anthony Wayne, hero of the American Revolution, a very real hero, was a ladies' man, and that there were real feelings between him and Caty Greene. I took it upon myself as a writer of fiction to take the whole thing a little further. General Wayne respected and admired his friend General Greene too much to dishonor that friendship in any way.
It is true that Caty's son George did drown in the river, and the manner of Nathanael's death is also true. Her marriage to Phineas Miller is fact, also. In defense of Caty Greene, women did not have it easy in that era. Their presence in the home, their behavior and labor were most important to the survival of their family. They were totally dependent upon their husband, his demands, those of the family, and the social strictures. If they married well and the man was "of good parts," they could be happy. If they married poor or if their husband was mean, they were destined to be miserable. In either case their fate was to have many children, and the wear and tear on their bodies could, and often did, kill them.
As General Wayne told Cornelia in the book: "During the war, the social rules were relaxed, and at Valley Forge we did as we pleased and had a good time. After the war, we expected the same thing. But found that out in the world, nothing had changed. That kiss I gave your mother meant nothing. It was just something like we used to do at Valley Forge."
Was it? It was something that Cornelia, and my reader, must figure out for themselves.
Ann Rinaldi
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Boatner, Mark Mayo, III. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. New York: David McKay Company, 1966.
Carbone, Gerald M. Nathanael Greene: A Biography of the American Revolution. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Langguth, A. J. Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Showman, Richard K. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, vol. 2 (1 January 1777-16 October 1778). Chapel Hill, N.C.: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1980.
Spruill, Juila Cherry. Women's Life and Work in the Southern Colonies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972. Published simultaneously in Canada by George J. McLeod Limited, Toronto, copyright 1972 by W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.
Stegeman, John F., and Janet A. Stegeman. Caty: A Biography of Catharine Littlefield Greene. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977.
Tagney, Ronald N. The World Turned Upside Down. West Newbury, Mass.: Essex County History, 1989.
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