Dark Eagle

Dark Eagle is a historical novel by John Ensor Harr, published by Viking in 1999. It is about the American general Benedict Arnold and the revolutionary war in which his reputation was made and then destroyed.

The novel takes its title from the name given to Arnold by his Indian allies, who respected his military genius and his ruthlessness in equal measure. It follows his rise as one of the Continental Army's most effective commanders, from outwitting the British at Valcour Bay and relieving Fort Stanwix to the victory at Saratoga that turned the war around. It also follows the other half of his career: a wound that never healed properly, a string of political humiliations, and the debts and resentments that left him convinced his own side had repaid him with ingratitude. Harr keeps the action on both sides of the conflict, so the reader watches a genuinely capable soldier move steadily towards the decision that made his name a synonym for betrayal.

The book is a biographical novel rather than a campaign history, and its interest is in how a man with real courage and real achievements arrives at the point of turning on his own army.