"“...we are at war. We must encourage our husbands and stay strong for them."
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Lady Unveiled: Catharine Greene Miller 1775-1814 by Pamela Bauer Mueller Piñata Publishing
book review by Donna Ford
Catharine (Kitty) Littlefield Greene was a twenty-year-old bride living in Rhode Island when the Revolutionary War began. Her husband, Nathanael Greene, was thirteen years older. Although a Quaker, he joined the war and would become George Washington's most dependable general. Alternately, Kitty went from socializing with army officers to being pregnant and lonely in the RI home of her husband's Quaker family. She learned resilience as she followed Nathanael, often with their children in tow, along the eastern coast down to Georgia, the site of his greatest battles. The end of the war saw the Greenes struggle with loans he incurred when securing supplies to meet his soldier's needs. However, General Greene was awarded several properties in Georgia confiscated from those who supported the British. A plantation, Mulberry Grove, and later a castle on Cumberland Island would become home. Kitty, known as Lady Greene, would also have to fight and win the greatest battles of her life in Georgia.
Pamela Bauer Mueller has written another excellent historical novel, this time honoring a little-known patriot wife. Mueller did not have to invent an exciting life for her character. In her teens, Kitty met Benjamin Franklin. By the time she was thirty, Kitty dazzled many of the significant people of her day. She and her children were befriended by George and Martha Washington. Lafayette offered to educate her oldest son, George Washington Greene, in France along with his own son also named George Washington. Kitty knew Alexander Hamilton and Benedict Arnold. Eli Whitney was a tutor to her children in Georgia where she encouraged him to build a cotton gin in the workshop of her home. An index would have been useful for tracking these many associations.
Mueller has skillfully unveiled Lady Greene, the loving wife of a Revolutionary War hero. Yet to those who loved her in return, she always remained the irrepressible Kitty.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review