Donna Thorland

Donna Thorland writes historical fiction in which romance, espionage, and political conflict converge during the American Revolution. The Dutch Girl belongs to her Renegades of the American Revolution sequence and appeared from Berkley in 2016. Manhattan and the Hudson River Valley in 1778 frame Anna Winters's story. A finishing-school teacher, Anna once lived as Annatje and remains connected to tenant resistance against powerful Dutch landowners. A covert mission sends her toward Harenwyck, where British control, Rebel strategy, highway raids, and competing ideas about land reform complicate every allegiance. Anna's practical intelligence anchors details of Dutch language, patroon estates, and the Hudson Highlands. Thorland studied classics and art history at Yale, later earned an MFA in film production, and has written for television. The Dutch Girl draws those interests together, pairing researched colonial institutions with the reversals, divided loyalties, and forward momentum of a screen drama.