The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte

Gold Medal Winner, Historical Fiction Personage, 2014 Readers' Favorite Awards
First Place Winner, Turn of the 19th Century, 2014 Chaucer Awards for Historical Fiction

Tell the emperor that Madame Bonaparte is ambitious and demands her rights as a member of the imperial family.

As a clever girl in stodgy, mercantile Baltimore, Betsy Patterson dreams of a marriage that will transport her to cultured Europe. When she falls in love with and marries Jerome Bonaparte, she believes her dream has come true-until Jerome's older brother Napoleon becomes an implacable enemy.

Based on a true story, The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte is a historical novel that portrays this woman's tumultuous life. Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, known to history as Betsy Bonaparte, scandalized Washington with her daring French fashions; visited Niagara Falls when it was an unsettled wilderness; survived a shipwreck and run-ins with British and French warships; dined with presidents and danced with dukes; and lived through the 1814 Battle of Baltimore. Yet through it all, Betsy never lost sight of her primary goal-to win recognition of her marriage.

Author: Ruth Hull Chatlien
Publisher: Amika Press
Published: 12/02/2013
Pages: 496
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781937484163


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2014
Publishers Weekly 05/26/2014

About the Author
Ruth Hull Chatlien has been a writer and editor of educational materials for nearly thirty years, specializing in U.S. and world history. She is the author of Modern American Indian Leaders for middle-grade readers. Her award-winning first novel, The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte, portrays the tumultuous life of Elizabeth "Betsy" Patterson Bonaparte. Her second novel is Blood Moon: A Captive's Tale.

KIRKUS REVIEWS, kirkusreviews.com

Chatlien's debut historical fiction celebrates the drive and desires of the real-life Betsy Patterson, a Baltimore merchant's daughter who married a Bonaparte.

As a child and young woman, Betsy Patterson was precocious, lovely, dismissive of America and not terribly eager to sit around and do what she was told. Of her American suitors, she laments, "Marriage to any one of them would sentence me to a life...bearing child after child until my mind is rusted from disuse." When a European lieutenant comes to Baltimore, Betsy finds love and opportunity-the lieutenant is, after all, Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon's youngest brother. The two wed, but when Napoleon refuses to acknowledge the marriage, which may hinder the potential for political alliances, the newly minted Madame Bonaparte discovers that a court life is not so easily attainable for an American girl. Her ambition doesn't subside, however. Instead, it underlies her new mission to receive recognition of her union, which means pitting herself against the most powerful man in the world. "Napoleon dismissed me as expendable because I am American and a woman," she says. "Someday I will make him see that he was wrong on both counts." Betsy is a captivating heroine whose independence and intelligence are given their proper due in Chatlien's novel. Against the backdrop of world events, such as the battle at Waterloo and the War of 1812, Betsy fights her own, smaller battles, ignoring censure from her stern father and other compatriots who criticize her tenacity and her scandalous French fashions. Her story has suspense, a rapidly moving plot and rich details of 19th-century life, from quotidian tasks to grand parties with Dolley and James Madison at the Presidential Mansion....It undoubtedly offers compelling insights into the minds of real, deeply engrossing individuals.

A fascinating account of one woman's fight to defiantly stray from her predetermined path.


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