Title: Star-Spangled Scandal
Author: Lori Swerda
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 978-1532069789
Pages: 264
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop
Pacific Book Review
Too often we learn about the past only from the dry dustbins of historical reference. Fortunately, every now and then a writer takes it upon him or herself to recount not only what happened long ago but also what might have happened. Filling in blank spaces of knowledge with the fire and fury of human emotions brings the past back to life more memorably than any arid recitation of facts ever could. And that’s exactly what Lori Swerda has done in Star-Spangled Scandal. She has created not only an exceptional recreation of historic fact, but also a memorable and highly entertaining chronicle of historic fiction.
Swerda tells her story from three distinct points of view. The first is from Philip Barton Key II, the son of Francis Scott Key who penned what was to become America’s National Anthem. The second is from Teresa Bagioli Sickles, a young wife and mother involved in a torrid affair with Philip. The third is from Alicia Key Pendleton, Philip’s sister, who will go on to be involved in one of the most famous crimes in American history.
The sweep of Swerda’s tale encompasses multiple lives that span decades from The War of 1812 to America’s Civil War. Her meticulous research and attention to detail fill her chronicle with vivid examples of what life was like during tumultuous times that saw the growth of Washington as a swamp infested backwater to the nation’s capital it was to become. Individual views of slavery that eventually rip the country asunder are also part and parcel of her tale. But in this time of monumental events, it is Swerda’s recreation of basic human values and foibles that rivet one’s attention to her story—a story alive with the mistakes people make and the tragedies that sometimes result from them.
The core of the plot revolves around the widowed Key’s adulterous affair with the very married Mrs. Sickles. He’s a good man who has known loss. She’s a lonely woman stuck in a loveless marriage to an abominable cad. Their dangerous liaisons are uncovered and Sickles’s husband shoots and kills Key within steps of The White House. The murder itself however, is not the highpoint. The particularly engaging and intriguing parts of Swerda’s novel explore how the relationship developed in the first place, who knew and didn’t know about it, how Sickles’s husband became away of it, and what happened after the murder itself—not just to the killer, but also to the country.
Swerda unravels her mysteries slowly. She writes with a fluid style that keeps you turning pages as one character after another is introduced, placed on her literary chessboard, and given a role to play. Many are major historical figures you’ll immediately recognize. Some are little known minor participants. But the author has infused all of them with flesh and blood qualities that strikingly bring them to life. Like the best of novelists, Swerda strategically inserts surprises along the way, and the closer she gets to novel’s end, the more the revelations increase in impact.
Ernest Hemingway is credited with saying, “All good books have one thing in common— they are truer than if they really happened.” That utterance seems particularly applicable to the Star-Spangled Scandal.
