Obstinate Daughters by Denise Kiernan gave me a very different way of looking at the American Revolution. Instead of telling the story primarily through the familiar Founding Fathers, battles, and political speeches, Kiernan focuses on women whose lives and actions were deeply connected to the Revolution. What I found most interesting was the incredible variety of these women. They were soldiers, spies, writers, publishers, preachers, businesswomen, Indigenous leaders, enslaved women, and ordinary women trying to protect their families and communities.

One of the women who particularly stood out to me was Margaret Corbin. During the Battle of Fort Washington, Corbin fought alongside her husband and, after he was killed, took over his position at the cannon. She was wounded herself but continued fighting until she was seriously injured. Her story really challenged my idea of what women’s participation in the Revolution looked like. She wasn’t simply supporting the war from home as she was literally on the battlefield.

I was also interested in Elizabeth Drinker, a Quaker woman whose diary provides a very different view of the Revolution. Her experience demonstrates how complicated the war could be for people whose religious beliefs did not fit neatly into the Patriot-versus-Loyalist divide. Her story, including her petition to George Washington at Valley Forge, shows how women could document events and use their voices even when they had no formal political power.

Another story that stayed with me was Elizabeth Freeman, an enslaved Massachusetts woman who challenged the institution of slavery by suing for her freedom and won. Her story brings out one of the biggest contradictions Kiernan examines throughout the book: Americans were fighting for liberty from Britain while many continued to enslave other people. Freeman’s pursuit of her own freedom makes the Revolutionary language of “liberty” much more complicated and personal.

Deborah Sampson is another fascinating example. Sampson disguised herself as a man so that she could serve as a soldier during the Revolution. Her story demonstrates just how far some women were willing to go to participate directly in the conflict despite the restrictions placed on them. I found her especially memorable because she deliberately crossed one of the most obvious boundaries of the time women were not supposed to be soldiers and proved that those expectations could be challenged.

Kiernan also broadens the story beyond the Patriot cause by including Nanye’hi, or Nancy Ward, a Cherokee leader. Her story is particularly important because it reminds us that the Revolution was not simply a struggle between Americans and Britain. Indigenous communities had their own interests, dangers, and political decisions to navigate. Nanye’hi worked to protect people and warned Patriot settlements of impending attacks, even though doing so involved difficult choices concerning her own people.

I was also struck by the stories of enslaved women such as Mary Perth, who became a Methodist lay preacher and later sought freedom by fleeing toward the British. Her story shows that enslaved people were not simply passive observers of the Revolution. They were making their own calculations about which side might offer them a path to freedom. At the same time, their experiences expose the enormous contradiction between the Patriots’ demands for freedom and the continued existence of slavery.

Kiernan also brings in women who influenced the Revolution through writing and publishing. Phillis Wheatley, for example, is one of the women featured in the book. Her poetry gave her a public voice at a time when both her gender and her status as an enslaved Black woman placed enormous restrictions on her. Including Wheatley helps demonstrate that revolutionary ideas were being expressed not only on battlefields but also through words, literature, and public opinion.

What I appreciated most about the book is that Kiernan doesn’t present one single version of the “Revolutionary woman.” There were women who supported independence, women who remained loyal to Britain, Quaker women who struggled with the morality of war, Indigenous women protecting their communities, and enslaved women pursuing their own freedom. There were also women who simply had to keep their families and businesses functioning while the men in their lives were away.

That made the Revolution feel much more personal to me. Instead of thinking only about dates like 1776 or famous events such as the Declaration of Independence, I found myself thinking about what those years actually meant for individual women. For some, it meant taking over a farm or business. For others, it meant fighting, spying, writing, nursing, fleeing slavery, or trying to protect their families. For many, it meant living with uncertainty and loss.

The title Obstinate Daughters also makes more sense when looking at these individual stories. These women were considered “obstinate” because they refused to remain within the boundaries society had established for them. Margaret Corbin refused to remain on the sidelines of a battle. Deborah Sampson refused to accept that military service was exclusively for men. Elizabeth Freeman refused to accept that she had to remain enslaved. Other women used writing, religion, business, or political influence to make themselves heard.

Overall, Obstinate Daughters changed the way I think about the American Revolution because it shows how incomplete the traditional story can be. I came away feeling that the Revolution was not just something carried out by generals, politicians, and the men whose names appear most often in history books. Women were there throughout the entire story on battlefields, in homes, in churches, at printing presses, on plantations, and in their communities.

For me, the most powerful part of the book is the reminder that “liberty” meant something different to each of these women. Some were fighting for American independence, some were fighting for their communities, and some were fighting simply to control their own lives. Kiernan brings those different experiences together to create a much fuller picture of how complicated and personal the founding of the United States really was.