Benjamin Franklin's Bastard

by Sally Cabot

  Temple Franklin, following in his grandfather’s and father’s footsteps, fathered an illegitimate daughter with William’s new sister-in-law, but then abandoned the family, leaving his seventy-year-old father to claim the child as his own. Before his death in 1813, William Franklin followed in his father’s footsteps once again by disinheriting his son in favor of his granddaughter/adopted daughter, Ellen.

  The identity of Temple Franklin’s birth mother also remains unknown.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MY THANKS GO OUT to the folks at the Historical Society of Philadelphia, who put in considerable effort to deliver unreadable text in readable form; to everyone involved with the Massachusetts Interlibrary Loan System, who got me just the right material at just the right time; to my agent Kris Dahl at ICM, for opening new doors and adding a fresh and insightful point of view to this work; to my editor Jennifer Brehl at William Morrow, who never quits until it’s right; to her indefatigable assistant Emily Krump; and to my family of early readers who egged me on without mercy—you know who you are.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .

  About the author

  Meet Sally Cabot

  About the book

  Reading Group Guide

  Read on

  From the Pen of Benjamin Franklin

  Have You Read?

  More by Sally Cabot

  About the author

  Meet Sally Cabot

  Author photograph © by Amanda Appleton

  SALLY CABOT came to writing at a young age, driven to it in desperation one rainy day when she ran out of books. A family tree rich in disreputable as well as admirable characters first got her interested in historical research, but a museum job during her college years addicted her to digging out “the other history”—the one not found in the history books. Discovering that fiction can be more real than fact, though only if the author has the facts well in hand, she decided to give some of those buried stories the human face and heart they lacked. She lives with her husband in Brewster, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she is currently working on her fifth historical novel. Writing as Sally Gunning, she is also the author of three other historical novels set in New England: The Widow’s War, Bound, and The Rebellion of Jane Clarke.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  About the book

  Reading Group Guide

  1.Describe Anne. Do you think she is a woman of her time—or ahead of her time? What is the nature of her connection to Benjamin Franklin? Would you call them friends? Do they love each other?

  2.Describe the Benjamin Franklin that emerges from the pages of the novel. Is he a moral man? What does he do to—and for—Anne that reveals his character? What draws him to Anne and to Deborah Read?

  3.Talk about the relationship between Benjamin and Deborah. How does it begin and progress as the story unfolds? How does Franklin’s ambition affect their relationship? How would you describe Deborah’s temperament and her character? How does she compare to Anne?

  4.Did Anne do the right thing giving up her son to his father? What might the boy’s life have been like if she did not? How would Anne’s own life have been affected? Would Anne have been a good mother? How does Deborah react when she learns of William’s existence? If their positions were reversed, how would Anne behave? Is Deborah a suitable mother?

  5.What was life like for women in colonial days? How are their lives—their relationships, their choices, their needs, their ambitions—portrayed in Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard? How have things changed for women—and single mothers—today?

  6.Do you think Anne is content with her life? Do you think she made the best of things? What choices might Anne have made to make things different? Why can’t she let go of her attachment to her son? Should she have found a way to tell him the truth regardless of the cost?

  7.Talk about Franklin’s relationship with his son, William. What are his expectations for William? What does William want for himself? Are William’s choices his own—or driven by forces he cannot ignore or control? Would William have felt better or worse knowing the truth about his birth mother?

  8.Compare William’s bond with Maude in London and Franklin’s bond with Anne. Would you call the Franklin men womanizers or are they just privileged men of their time?

  9.Why does Franklin support the cause of independence yet William does not? What impact does this rift have on their bond?

  10.Describe Deborah’s relationship with William. To what degree do you think her problems with her son stem from her relationship with Benjamin and to what degree from her relationship with William?

  Read on

  From the Pen of Benjamin Franklin

  •Silence is not always a sign of wisdom, but babbling is ever a folly.

  •The cat in gloves catches no mice.

  •What you would seem to be, be really.

  •Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain and most fools do.

  •Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  •We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.

  •Never ruin an apology with an excuse.

  •Many people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are seventy-five.

  •If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.

  •There was never a bad peace or a good war.

  •The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.

  •Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.

  •When you are finished changing, you’re finished.

  •When you’re testing to see how deep water is, never use two feet.

  •Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

  •If you’re going through hell, keep going.

  •Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

  •Work as if you were to live a thousand years; play as if you were to die tomorrow.

  •The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you’re finished.

  •Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

  •The only thing that is more expensive than education is ignorance.

  •He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

  •He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

  •The person who knows HOW will always have a job, but the person who knows WHY will always be the boss.

  •Thinking aloud is a habit which is responsible for most of mankind’s misery.

  •Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.

  •Write to please yourself. When you write to please others you end up pleasing no one.

  •All would live long, but none would be old.

  •A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

  •In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. . . . Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

  •Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so; it is not so. It is so; it is not so.

  •Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, “Without vanity I may say,” etc., but some vain thing immediately followed.

  •So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

  •Keep up your spirits, and that will keep up your bodies.

  Have You Read?

  More by Sally Cabot

  DID YOU KNOW? Sally Cabot has three more books, written as Sally Gunning!

  THE WIDOW’S WAR

  Married for twenty years to Edward Berry, Lyddie is used to the trials of being a whaler’s wife in the Cape Cod village of Satucket, Massachusetts—runn
ing their house herself during her husband’s long absences at sea, living with the daily uncertainty that Edward will simply not return. And when her worst fear is realized, she finds herself doubly cursed. She is overwhelmed by grief, and her property and rights are now legally in the hands of her nearest male relative: her daughter’s overbearing husband, whom Lyddie cannot abide. Lyddie decides to challenge both law and custom for control of her destiny, but she soon discovers the price of her bold “war” for personal freedom to be heartbreakingly dear.

  Evocative and assured, The Widow’s War is a stunning work of literary magic, a spellbinding tale from a gifted writer.

  “Heartrending. . . . Gunning’s storytelling captures the paradox at the heart of colonial women’s lives: managing a household, indeed survival itself, required ability and toughness, yet women were denied the basic rights befitting adulthood. . . . For all her steeliness, Lyddie is not a one-dimensional heroine; in private, she wrestles with loneliness, anxiety, sexual desire, the fatigue of struggling by herself. . . . Gunning’s vibrant portrayal of Lyddie’s journey shows that the pursuit of happiness is not for the faint of heart.”

  —Boston Globe

  “[B]eautifully written. . . . Gripping, romantic, historically sound, and completely satisfying, The Widow’s War is a standout. I’ll be surprised if I read a better historical novel this year.”

  —Historical Novels Review, Editor’s Choice

  “Sally Gunning is a gifted storyteller adept at layering time, place and character and revealing conflicts of the heart. With prose that sings in perfect pitch, she has given us a deeply affecting tale of a woman caught between the irresistible currents of her inner truth and the equally powerful strictures of her times.”

  —Anne LeClaire, author of The Law of Bound Hearts and Entering Normal

  BOUND

  Brought to New England and bound into servitude to pay her father’s debts, Alice Cole, at fifteen, can barely remember the time when she was not a servant to John Morton. His daughter, Nabby—only three years older than Alice—begins as Alice’s childhood companion; when she is wed, she becomes Alice’s mistress. But the marriage is not what it appears, and Alice, endangered by its storm, defies her new master and the law, and escapes to Boston. Impulsively stowing away on a ship to Satucket on Cape Cod, Alice believes she has left her old life and her secrets behind. Yet in a time of unrest and uncertainty, as political and personal stakes rise and intertwine, she discovers that freedom, friendship, trust, and love each have a price far greater than she ever imagined.

  “Two hundred years ago, Cape Cod was not a haven for visitors in sun hats with boxes of fudge. It was an unforgiving spit of sand, where women’s lives were as harsh as those of the men who went down to the sea in ships and came back in shrouds. In her novel of pitiless beauty, Bound, author Sally Gunning demonstrates again what she did in The Widow’s War. Unlike many historical novelists, Gunning makes the long-ago feel like this very day. Elegantly, she tells bitter truths—that dignity and grace and even abiding love can flourish where it seems nothing can grow.”

  —Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Still Summer

  “[O]utstanding. . . . [Gunning] painstakingly re-creates colonial Cape Cod, from its clapboard houses, busy wharves, and fresh salty air to the growing political stirrings among its residents. As a stand-alone novel, Bound will transport you 250 years into the past and immerse you in a dramatic storyline that exposes the injustice of indentured servitude. As a sequel to The Widow’s War, it not only continues but enhances the experience of the original. Beautifully done, and strongly recommended.”

  —Historical Novels Review, Editor’s Choice

  “This book, eloquently written and exhaustively researched, is a warning along the lines of The Handmaid’s Tale, and just as necessary a read.”

  —Feminist Review

  THE REBELLION OF JANE CLARKE

  Jane Clarke leads a simple yet rich life in the village of Satucket on Cape Cod—until her refusal to marry the man her father has picked out as his son-in-law causes an irreparable tear in the family fabric. Banished to Boston to make her living as best she can, Jane enters a strange, bustling city awash with redcoats and rebellious fervor. And soon her new life is complicated by her growing attachment to her frail aunt, her friendship with the bookseller Henry Knox, and the unexpected kindness of British soldiers, which pits her against the townspeople and her own brother, Nate, a law clerk working for John Adams. But it is the infamous Boston Massacre—the killing of five colonists by British soldiers on a cold March evening in 1770—that forces Jane to question accepted truths as she confronts the most difficult choice of her life.

  Sally Gunning’s The Rebellion of Jane Clarke is an unforgettable story of one woman’s struggle to find her own place and leave her mark as a new country is born.

  “Brewster author Sally Gunning’s latest excursion to 1760s Boston and Cape Cod contains the elements we’ve come to expect in this series: an appealing central female character, a clutch of appearances by notable revolutionaries, and an attention to the particulars of daily life in a time very different from our own. . . . Those who enjoyed the author’s previous books, The Widow’s War and Bound, will delight in the further adventures of familiar characters who provide the backdrop for Rebellion.”

  —The Barnstable Patriot

  “[B]lazing. . . . Gunning’s fluid writing and attention to the larger issues of human nature . . . really make this move. Good historical fiction offers new perspectives on old stories. This book succeeds handily at the task.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Gunning describes daily life in pre-Revolutionary Boston with conviction and ease . . . paint[ing] period atmosphere in multiple shades of gray and expos[ing] the realities behind the popular mythology of the American Revolution. . . . A historical novel of integrity and substance, The Rebellion of Jane Clarke is a fitting showcase for a heroine of similar mettle.”

  —Reading the Past

  PRAISE FOR

  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S BASTARD

  BY SALLY CABOT

  “Why do readers love historical fiction? Read Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard and find out. It brings a forgotten time so skillfully to life that we feel as if we are there. It mesmerizes us with characters that are like us in so many ways but so different, too. It fills our senses. It carries us to places where the historian seldom goes and answers questions that the historian may only speculate upon. And in the process, it brings us face to face with the truths that are the most profound in any era. This is a superb novel. Don’t miss it.”

  —William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of Cape Cod and The Lincoln Letter

  “Cabot shines in her descriptions of colonial life, in her fictionalized rendition of Ben Franklin’s charismatic personality and wide-ranging intellect, but especially in interpreting Franklin the man through Anne, a fully-realized, memorable character. It is Anne who brings imagined reality’s magic to the narrative. Intriguing historical fiction; a laudable interpretation of colonial life.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Cabot laces her assured novel with Shakespearean overtones as the characters continually misconstrue one another’s motives. From Franklin’s intense intellectual curiosity to Anne’s stubborn insistence on leading an independent life, this memorable cast makes for spellbinding reading.”

  —Booklist

  “Cabot succeeds brilliantly by depicting Franklin through the eyes of his wife and fictional mistress. . . . Though the mother of Franklin’s illegitimate son William is unknown, Cabot crafts a plausible, tough, and sympathetic heroine in Anne. Cabot’s grasp of the era and thorough research is evident, but it never overwhelms her story, which at its heart is a poignant take of love, survival, loyalty, and the meaning of family. Fantastic.”

  —RT Book Reviews (four-and-a-half stars)

  “An enticing read for history buffs . . . genuinely heart-wrenchin
g.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Unforgettable.”

  —Shelf Awareness

  “For all Franklin’s genius, fortune, and increasing stature, he is not spared the trials of women, concerns for children, or the struggles between a father and son with political differences. . . . Cabot is a gifted writer.”

  —Providence Journal

  CREDITS

  Cover design by Emin Mancheril

  Cover photograph © by Elisabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S BASTARD. Copyright © 2013 by Sally Cabot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition June 2014 ISBN 9780062241948