Ann Eliza Bleecker's letters, poems, and narratives depict her tumultuous experiences while living on the front lines of the American Revolution. Her letters in particular offer fascinating details and insights into the material lives of the ordinary men and women who participated in the War for Independence. They offer gossip about local premarital pregnancies, providing a satirical advertisement for much-needed husbands; they tell of a local "religious fanatic" who murdered his family and livestock; and they describe her feelings of betrayal by the acts of Benedict Arnold. Her work is also significant for its contributions to an emerging American literary tradition. Bleecker produced one of the first fictionalized Indian captivity narratives, an important and distinctly American genre. In The History of Maria Kittle, first published in The Posthumous Works of Ann Eliza Bleecker (1793), she transposed her own story of maternal loss onto the already popular form, contributing to...