Wait wait wait wait…you’re telling me there was an actual girl who Mulan(ed) her way into the American Revolutionary War and fought as a man for over two years?  Who served on General John Paterson’s personal staff…who removed a bullet from her own thigh…who was only discovered when she got sick…who was honorably discharged as a woman…who was the first women to successfully petition congress for a military pension…who spent a year of her life after the war traveling from city to city telling about her experience…whose headstone actually says “Female Soldier” on it?  You’re telling me all these things are true, but we don’t know about her?!

Well dang.  Leave it to Amy Harmon to get me reading a kissing book.  Again.

Thank you, Amy Harmon, for bringing Deborah Samson to life.  Amy knew it wasn’t enough to say Deborah Samson disguised herself as a man for a couple years so she could fight in the American Revolutionary War and declare her story told.  There’s so much more to tell.

Consider the implications!  How did she hide herself?  Stay clean?  Go to the bathroom?  Have a period?

Consider what she would have gone through!  The travails of war are terrible—the burden of hiding and the fear of being discovered would have been relentless.  She had to treat her own wounds so the doctors wouldn’t discover her secret.

Consider her motivation!  How passionate for the cause would she have had to be?  How strongly she must have loved the idea of a United States of America!

These are the shoulders the free peoples of the world stand upon today.  I’m so, so glad I now know Deborah’s story.

Want to be inspired?  Want to be uplifted?  Want to feel patriotic?  Want to appreciate the legacy of strong women?  Want to be amazed by real history you didn’t know about?  Want to be impressed? 

Go read A Girl Called Samson.

Parents and discerning adults may want to know there is no language to be concerned with, and the war violence is mild.  The sexual content is what you’d expect in an Amy Harmon book.  Low on description, high on emotion, but enough steam that you know exactly what’s happening.  There are 3 or 4 scenes in the last ¼ of the book I would not be comfortable reading aloud to my teenage daughter, so I say best for 18 and up.

Happy Reading!