Peggy Owen and Liberty

A snowstorm surrounds the Owen household in Philadelphia on the first of March, 1782, while Peggy and her mother prepare dinner for visiting friends. The warmth indoors briefly offsets the strain of a war that continues after Cornwallis's surrender. Peggy, a young Quaker who has become an active patriot, soon faces a more personal problem when her cousin Clifford is threatened with capture and her friends gather to help her.

Lucy Foster Madison combines a story for young readers with the uncertain loyalties and disrupted homes of the American Revolution. Later scenes follow Peggy and Sally among people helping the inhabitants of devastated Tom's River. Their concern for Fairfax Johnson, held aboard a British guard ship, brings the rules and delays of prisoner exchanges into the conversation. Domestic work, friendly teasing, wartime relief and anxious waiting give readers a view of the conflict through family ties and everyday responsibilities.