Murdered by His Wife

Book excerpt: Fiction writer and independent scholar Navas reconstructs a little-remembered incident during the US war for independence. Bathsheba took in and nursed a 16-year-old Continental soldier returning from a year under Washington, and became pregnant by him. Because divorce was nearly impossible and adulteresses were publicly stripped and whipped, she, with help from the boy and others, beat hubby to death and stuffed him in a well. It did not help her case that her father was the state's most prominent and despised Loyalist. There is no index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR