speech may have been first spoken by his dying, mentally ill wife, Sarah, whom he kept locked up in a cellar to prevent her from hurting anyone.
As the mother of a large family and wife of Patrick Henry succumbs to a genetic mental disorder, she is removed to a cellar prison in her own house, where she shows the power to predict future outcomes.
Her family is left to cope with her absence, even as they are threatened to be torn apart by the knowledge that their middle child may have inherited their mother's disease.
This leaves Patsy to become the head of the house with her father gone persuading the Americans to rebel against Britain.
As Sarah begins to lose her mind, she also gains the ability to supposedly see the future.
Rumors spread about a madwoman locked in a cellar in the town, and Patsy does her best to conceal it from the public.
Anne is forced to write to John and when he reads the letter, it triggers the bad blood that he inherited from his mother.
At the end of the book, Anne tells her father who really has the bad blood and wonders if keeping all the secrets was really the right thing to do.
Patrick Henry is a wealthy and well-known man who supports the American patriot cause for independence from Britain, their mother country.
After her wife dies, he mourns for two weeks and goes back out to speak in order to help win the war.
Sarah, a woman with an aristocratic background descended from Alfred the Great, is Patrick Henry's wife and a mother of 6.
This included never admitting her love for her husband because "it was not consistent with the perfection of female delicacy" (65) which she learned in the book The Ladies Library.
Towards the end of her life, she tells her husband "Oh, Patrick, give me my freedom or let me die!".
As the slaves become more bold, she believes that they are trying to poison her, so she forces Pegg to take a sip before serving to the family.
John secretly sees Dorothea Dandridge, knowing that his father would disapprove of such a marriage.
Eventually, they get married and Anne is told to write a letter to John telling him of the wedding.
Her stubborn attitude, free spirit, and love for riding horses causes her to get in trouble with her older sister, Patsy.
As a form of rebellion against Patsy's ruling and spreading word about the cruel and unjust treatments Estave put his slave through, she starts writing articles with a fake name, Intrepid.
Pegg is related to Neely which leads Mrs. Hooper to the assumption that the Henrys' slaves were writing letters in the newspaper.
Her future is also predicted by Patsy's mother and is told that her husband would die and leave her in debt.
In the beginning of the novel, the main conflict is the fact that their mother goes crazy and becomes unable to care for the family.
Unlike other books that take place at a house instead of war, it is a gripping story that will leave you questioning Patrick Henry and his family.
Patsy is the first narrator, and she describes how the family must find a way to conceal their own mother as her mind starts to slip away.
Or is Anne a lonely, sacrificing, misunderstood girl buried by secrets, subjected to tyrannical Patsy?
Anne, another daughter was narrating, and her character was annoying, whiny, and didn't have respect for what other members of the house were going through.
On a final note it is important to mention that Rinaldi fleshes out the end of her novel with a short conclusion where she reasons out all the events within her book.
-School Library Journal[3] "Told from the double perspective of two of Patrick Henry's daughters, this is the compelling story of a family's personal tragedy during the American Revolution.
With the country in political turmoil, the father is away from home leaving the children to deal with their mother's downward spiral into madness.
The concepts of mental illness and familial tension have been provocatively detailed in this engrossing piece of historical fiction.
An author's note and a bibliography are included in a book that will surely provide food for thought."