Joyce Lee Malcolm's Peter's War retells the story of the American War for Independence by exploring its meaning for Peter Sharon, an enslaved boy from Massachusetts, who fought on the colonies’ side during the war. An account of the colonies achieving independence frames a poignant narrative of a young boy who, after being raised by a childless white couple and being allowed to attend school with white children, slowly grows into the realities of racism and his enslavement. Peter Sharon (who also used the surnames Brooks and Nelson) was born into slavery in Massachusetts in 1763 and sold away from his parents to Josiah and Elizabeth Nelson when he was only a toddler. Extrapolating creatively from limited records—vital records, deeds, probate records, bills of sale, census data, town meeting records, tombstones, the papers of Peter's owners, and other fragmentary clues—Malcolm reconstructs in rich, suggestive detail the world in which Peter lived, down to the people whom he might have passed on the way to school. Peter was twelve when fighting broke out at Lexington, near his home; his owner Josiah had helped spread the news that the British regulars were marching to Concord. Despite Peter's youth, he and Josiah both quickly joined the fight against the British. Although the armies desperately needed soldiers, white Americans proved reluctant to arm African Americans, especially slaves, and after two initial enlistments, Peter was sent home to work on the farm. Peter could not reenlist until 1777, just in time for the Battle of Saratoga. He would reenlist several more times during the war, participating in the major campaigns and battles of the war, including the crucial battle in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. Peter's own perspective is, as Malcolm admits, elusive, but she draws from a variety of sources (such as Joseph Plumb Martin's wartime diary) to recreate Peter's wartime experiences as he grew up on the battlefields.

More broadly, the book beautifully illustrates the variety of ways that enslaved Northern blacks seized various opportunities created by the war and its social dislocation to gain their freedom, with or without their owners’ consent. Peter's father, Jupiter Brooks, gained his freedom after three years of army service, only to die shortly after the war. Peter bought his mother's and sister's freedom with an unusually large reenlistment bounty, and he very likely negotiated his own freedom through army service. Most usefully, Malcolm balances Peter's experiences in the war with the story of Titus, a young man who ran away from his Quaker owner. Unlike Peter, Titus found freedom by declaring loyalty to the British; after his escape, he took advantage of Lord Dunmore's offer of freedom to enslaved men who fled their rebel owners and joined the British war effort. Titus enlisted in the Royal Ethiopian Regiment, wearing a uniform emblazoned with “Liberty to Slaves.” Later, he achieved fame as Colonel Tye, leading a band of rangers raiding the countryside of Monmouth County, New Jersey, his home, until he died of tetanus in 1779. Throughout the book, Malcolm reflects upon the complex, difficult choices facing blacks, whether slave or free, in choosing their loyalties to Britain or the colonies; neither side treated blacks well. Malcolm illustrates these dilemmas by speculating on the reactions and emotions of the actors: Would southern slaves have admired Peter's status as a soldier, or seen him as siding with their owners? Peter's doubts about his loyalty to the colonies, she suggests, disappeared when he saw Cornwallis eject loyal blacks out of the besieged Yorktown in 1781. Malcolm concludes by discussing postwar emancipation in Massachusetts and the mixed record of the British in honoring their promises. This focus on Massachusetts (and British failings) permits a tidy resolution of the narrative. Perhaps too tidy; had Titus lived through the war, he and the other revolutionary-era New Jersey slaves could have remained legally enslaved until death.

The true value of the book is the way that it retells a familiar story from a fresh perspective. Malcolm interweaves Peter's private story into a traditional military-historical accounting of the struggle of the mainland colonies to free themselves from British rule. This is an engagingly written narrative, and Malcolm recreates the war in vivid detail. The book deserves a large popular audience; it will serve a valuable role in helping students and lay readers understand the roles of Northern blacks in the war and the tensions implicit in the colonies’ demands for freedom for white inhabitants while enslaving black inhabitants. The book's usefulness for professional historians is diminished by the choice to replace endnotes with a very brief essay on sources. It would be helpful to see how she arrived at her conclusions, such as her analysis of Peter's anxieties about his place in the Nelson home, as he shifted (as she suggests) from being a surrogate son to a slave. The absence of endnotes is especially a pity because Malcolm has so carefully teased out the story of Peter's life from a fragmentary record, illustrating how much we can learn about even obscure people from these sources.