Summary

The novel starts with the Prologue, titled “Mansion on the Hill,” that introduces the Schuylers, an old family that lived in a mansion in Albany, New York, in the year 1777. General Philip Schuyler, the patriarch, was the son of a Schuyler and a Vancortlandt. His wife, Catherine, was a Van Rensselaer, “the single most prominent family in the northern half of the state, whose tenure stretched all the way back to the Dutch days of the early 1600s” (1-2). Catherine’s dowry had built the mansion and the Schuyler’s country estate near Saratoga.

General Schuyler had been in charge of Fort Ticonderoga, but the British had captured the fort and he had been forced to retire. The British had taken the family’s country estate, too. When the Continental army forced the British out of the area, the British burned down...