cover image Spies and Tories

Spies and Tories

Rita Cleary. Rita Cleary, $26.95 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-86534-275-0

The tumultuous events experienced by an ordinary man during American revolutionary times are the focus of western writer Cleary's (Goldtown) first East Coast-based novel. Robert Townsend, a courageous young Quaker who sympathizes with the rebel cause, agrees to become a spy, posing as a Tory journalist and merchant. Cleary ably captures the atmosphere of war-torn New York, the urban hustle-and-bustle and raucous Manhattan pub life, and the contrasting genteel colonial environs of Oyster Bay, L.I. The behind-the-scenes view of Washington's ragtag army struggling to cope with sparse supplies, and the day-to-day lives of a politically divided citizenry, are engrossing, but the plot moves along most quickly when the plot centers on the thoughts, emotions and interactions of the main characters. Unfortunately, the two romances that dominate the story--those of Robert Townsend and Mary Drake, a spirited young married woman whose husband is sacrificed to the rebel effort, and of Robert's dynamic sister, Sally, who loves good-guy British Captain John Graves Simcoe--come to abrupt, unsatisfying conclusions. (May)