Attention all book groupies, here’s a intriguing and different read for you!

Benedict Arnold, traitor.  We don’t know much more about him besides that.  But what about the juicy backstory about his wife?…read on, book clubbers…

With her engaging tale, The Traitor’s Wife, Allison Pataki makes a big debut as a writer of historical fiction, highlighting the salacious story behind Benedict Arnold–how his young and beautiful wife, Peggy Shippen, co-conspired to (almost) stop the American Revolution in its tracks.

Jane and I got to know Alli and her husband Dave (pictured above) in 2011 when we photographed their wedding at her parents home overlooking West Point, NY.  Alli’s been on a big PR tour this past month, on the Today Show, Morning Joe, etc.  And she chatted with us via email…here’s some Q&A about Allison Pataki and her book, The Traitor’s Wife.  Kudos Alli!!

Did you always want to be a writer?  What draws you to historical fiction?

I’ve always loved a great story. I’ve always enjoyed writing and reading immensely. I love interviewing people and finding out what motivates them and how they respond and react to the events unfolding around them. I wrote news for several years before realizing that it was actually fiction writing that inspired me, more so than journalism.

Historical fiction is my favorite genre, both as a reader and a writer. Historical fiction allows us to slip back into another time period, or to inhabit a completely new, foreign land. It really is what excites my imagination, more so than anything else. Plus, I think that sometimes history proves even more dramatic than fiction. Certainly in the case of Peggy and Benedict Arnold, the historical account was so tense and salacious that I could not have made up a juicier plot for The Traitor’s Wife!

You have an ear for dialogue!  How did you write 18th century conversations that sound so real?

Well, thanks! Mostly from just trying to absorb as much about the style of that period as I could. So, reading the primary sources available from the time period. Reading their letters, their journal entries, etc. Reading the biographies of the key players in the novel: Benedict Arnold, John Andre, Peggy Arnold, George Washington. And then watching the series “John Adams,” based off of David McCullough’s fantastic book also helped.

What was your routine for writing and getting such a huge project completed?

I wrote at any moment I could find. At the time, I was still working full time at another day job. So, the writing was a job for late nights, weekends, days off, and other stolen moments.

It all began with the research. The research serves as an essential and foundational element of writing historical fiction. Everything else – the characters, the plot, the context and detail – sprout up as a result of the facts uncovered in the research. I actually began my research for The Traitor’s Wife with little more than an idea for the novel. I knew I wanted to write the story of Benedict Arnold’s treason, but from the perspective of his beautiful and intelligent wife. She was a central figure in the whole sordid plot – the central figure, you might say – yet so few people know her story. Including, at the time, me!

For The Traitor’s Wife, the first step involved going to the places where the characters lived and interacted. So, Philadelphia and West Point. Reading was also  a huge part of the research. I enjoyed tracking down biographies of all the principle characters. And I read about the related events that occurred, about the architecture of the period, about the wardrobe and the diet.  The research allowed me to put together not only the plot, but also the picture in my head of what Peggy and Benedict Arnold’s world might have looked and felt like.

Once I felt comfortable with all of that, the fun part began. The “fiction” half of the “historical fiction” genre! Creating the narrator, Clara Bell, to be the reader’s eyes and ears into this world of intrigue and plotting and love and lust. Making up the dialogue. Weaving the scenes together. It was all such a fun process.

You re-read Macbeth before writing The Traitor’s Wife.  What are your thoughts on the role women historically have played “behind the scenes” and how they channeled their motivations and ambitions?

Peggy Shippen Arnold was a loyalist both to the British cause, and to her husband. John Adams ventured an estimate that, at the time of the American Revolution, roughly one third of the colonialists supported independence, one third supported staying loyal to Great Britain, and one third were either neutral or undecided. So, Peggy was not some outlier in her politics. Her political beliefs were completely reasonable, even if we now look at them unfavorably through the lens of history and our American independence.

I think Peggy Arnold was a very intelligent, very well-connected, very ambitious woman who thought that her husband had been denied the credit that he deserved by his side, and she was going to help him rectify that.

However, once she realized that her and Benedict’s plot to end the American Revolution was going to fail, she wanted no part in the blame that would inevitably be doled out. And so I think she correctly harnessed the misconceptions and prejudices of her era — the flawed supposition that no woman could be that active and aware in orchestrating this treason. Boy, the men who underestimated her got it wrong!  Peggy is just one example of a woman whose role in history has sort of been lost. Everyone knows the name Benedict Arnold.  And yet, how many people even know that he was married?  And that his wife was such a fascinating figure in her own right?

There are many more leading ladies like Peggy.  I wrote this piece for the Huffington Post naming a few others. But this gives us, as historical fiction readers and writers, an incredible opportunity to go back and re-examine these historical moments through the perspective of the women who were there. Women who, though they were leading ladies of their own lives and of history, have become historical footnotes.

I just finished John LeCarre The Spy Who Came In from the Cold which really shows how the world of spycraft isn’t morally black and white.  How do you view Benedict Arnold in the context of espionage?

That’s exactly right. And especially when you are dealing with the time period of the American Revolution, the question of “loyalty” is an interesting one. Who were the loyalists?

Benedict Arnold’s character and subsequent decisions were a huge revelation to me. He was a much more complicated and nuanced figure than just “the traitor.”  Arnold was an ardent colonial patriot and a heroic general who fought valiantly for most of the Revolutionary War. If not for Arnold’s military skill at the Battle of Saratoga, the British would probably have won and the Revolution might have ended in 1777.

Also, I was surprised to learn that a certain amount of Arnold’s bitterness toward his colleagues on the American side was justified. George Washington often mediated for Arnold – and took his side – when Arnold was treated unfairly by the Continental Congress and his colleagues in the army. Benedict Arnold’s name is synonymous with “traitor,” yes, but there are so many other descriptors – and positive ones – that might also be applied to him.

It must’ve been fun to do research at the New York Public Library and Metropolitan Museum.  Ever thought about being a professor?

I’m so happy being an author, and that keeps me more than busy enough for now 🙂 I feel very fortunate to be able to do what I love each day.