Julie's Reviews > Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married

This book had some fun anecdotes and I loved the use of contemporary letters! The author had some great source material and I thought injected it into the narrative effectively and smoothly. That said, I can’t stand when a book has an obvious bias. To me, it seemed that the author thought much more highly of Peggy Arnold than Lucy Knox. It seemed to annoy the author that Lucy was so in love with her husband and wanted to be with him or hear from him. Peggy by contrast seemed to flourish when Benedict Arnold was absent, which the author made clear she respected. I’m wondering if perhaps she is judging these women not on the cultural norms of their time but on those of a more modern feminism. She even mentions how Peggy Arnold is forgotten by history, yet I’ve seen Peggy portrayed in far more movies, shows, and novels than Lucy Knox. In fact, where has Lucy Knox been remembered? Side note from my disappointment in the bias of this book- several times in this and other historical books it is mentioned that Lucy Knox was fat. So fat in fact that people wrote about it in their letters to one another, in a time when paper, quills, and ink were expensive, post was unreliable, and you had sunlight or candle to see by. So I looked it up, apparently they think she was about 250lbs, so now we know!