Titillation, exploitation, anything but history: [Peggy is] the cattiest first-person portrait of a vixen, Peggy Shippen, the girl who becomes Mrs. Benedict Arnold. The girl who sulks, screams, cries, faints (and reports it all proudly) when Father moves out of Philadelphia…. The girl who marries Arnold after stealing someone else's beau; who masterminds the grand betrayal; who despises the unborn infant sullying her perfect figure; who declares about the baby that its "'Mama' (she herself) was ready to put a pillow over his head and sit on it and might actually have done so if Major Franks had not been there." Cloaked with spiteful dagger thrashing out in all directions—unconscionable even as fiction.