With themes of bisexuality and biracial justice, Zoe Sivak’s 2022 dual story of the Haitian and French Revolutions will surely be banned from public schools in Florida and Texas. As the father of two argumentative teenage daughters, this is exactly the book I want them to read as they wrestle with questions of white privilege, economic and racial justice, and reconciling the precarious balance between terror and freedom.

I devoured this book in two days and found myself thoroughly engaged with the imagined conversations between the heroine and Robespierre as the book speeds to the Incorruptible’s inevitable end. This review will not contain spoilers. Suffice it to say, I am a fan of how Spivak navigates her heroine through the female political clubs of French society, noodling with her fellow nobles, yet jibing with the Jacobins, and manipulating the Montagnard’s partisan sympathy for the sansculottes.

Meeting Olympe de Gouges moves Sylvie from a passive observer to a participant in partisan politics. She asks, “How can I not [participate]? We invite that risk into our lives every moment we pray for the mercy of men who hardly think of us at all” (316). Do all history teachers dream of texts where the main characters quote Rousseau in their arguments? This book delivers in capturing the intellect of the Enlightenment in French salons.

Although I wouldn’t recommend this book for middle schoolers, high schoolish budding feminists will love the delightful plot twists that transform Sylvie from a vain and vapid woman of privilege into a formidable, female freedom fighter who curses out Robespierre, “You betrayed us! You became obsessed with terror — this precious fuel to revolution… Terror is a crueler tyrant than some spendthrift queen or hapless king could ever be. It’s a monarch I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Yet you wore terror like a crown” (Spivak, 2022, pp. 394-395).

In the past, I have had my students read Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser and Pure by Andrew Miller to better understand the factions, motivations, and nuances surrounding the French Revolution. However, Sivak’s work of historical fiction may better engage teenage readers and engross them in meaningful discussions about liberty, equality, and fraternity… (or sorority) and what those words mean today. Brava, Zoe Sivak!