Adventures of Deborah Sampson

About the Book

Adventures of Deborah Sampson by Jovanka Bach Set during the Revolutionary War, this is a story about how Deborah Sampson takes on the persona of a male soldier in the army. One of three daughters and three sons of Jonathan and Deborah Sampson; her youth is spent in poverty after her father abandons the family and goes off and drowns at sea. Her mother, unable to support all the children, eventually sends Deborah off as a servant to the household of Jeremiah Thomas. With an education that is mostly self-taught, she doesn’t want the life of a school teacher or of a weaver, another trade for a woman. A chance meeting with Nathan Andrews happens at a party, which takes place when she returns to the home of her mother, whom she hasn’t seen for many years. A quick romance with Nathan leads to a marriage ceremony however, before the ceremony is over, Deborah runs off and leaves her husband stranded. She purchases some men’s clothes and manages to enlist in the army disguised as a man. “She’d come to feel that it would be more honorable to be suffocated with the smoke from a cannon than to waste a useful, intended existence in despair suffocating by the smoke from a chimney in a warm farmhouse just because she’d been born a girl.” After a number of battles in which she proves herself as a competent soldier, her husband finally tracks her down. She manages to maintain her independence in spite of Nathan’s continual pleading for reconciliation. Eventually she is wounded in battle, and while being treated in a military hospital, the doctor discovers that she is actually a woman. Nathan continues trying to convince Deborah to leave the army and rejoin him in the marriage they had planned. Eventually she agrees and leaves the army to return to a life with Nathan.

About the Author

Jovanka Bach was a playwright, novelist, and medical doctor based in Los Angeles. Her first successful stage plays were the Balkan Trilogy, which her husband, John Stark, produced and directed at the Odyssey Theatre in Santa Monica and off-Broadway at the Barrow Group Theatre in New York. Other successful plays included O’Neill’s Ghosts, Sylvie, Mercy Warren’s Tea, and Nightsong for the Boatman. Most recently, her play Chekhov and Maria was produced in New York by John Stark and then filmed by Eric Till. It won three best feature awards and has aired on Super Channel Canada, Russian TV, and PBS TV. It will soon be aired on Spanish and French TV. Her Paddy the Flatfooted Platypus children’s stories have just been published and filmed as a cartoon. She wrote then just before she passed away in 2006. Bach’s screenplay The Adventures of Deborah Sampson was written several years ago and John Stark managed to obtain the services of well known novelist Ruth Marleee to adapt it into a novel. Ruthie Marlenée is a native of California and mother of two wonderful daughters. She has earned her Writer’s Certificate “With Distinction” from UCLA and has been nominated for the James Kirkwood Literary Award. She has a published novel, “Isabela’s Island,” and is currently working on her new novel, “Curse of the Ninth,” a paranormal thriller set in early Hollywood. She is a ghostwriter, screenwriter, novelist and a poet. Some of work her can be found in “Silver Birch Press,” “Long Story Short,” and Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis Rodriguez’ inaugural anthology, “Coiled Serpent.”