Deborah Sampson has a peculiar advantage: it has not been hammered home to her what she can’t do, because there has been no one to care for her at all. Abandoned at the age of only five years and indentured to a farmer at ten, she must plow for her master and keep house for his wife; yet she receives books and encouragement from an unlikely ally. By the time she is freed at 18, she has earned the strength, skills, and education usually reserved to men. Tired of the virtual enslavement of women, Deborah disguises herself as a man and enlists as “Robert Shurtleff” in the war against the British; but soon she learns that discovery of her very sex could lead to execution—by her own side.