No way you’re not going to keep reading a book with this opening line: “The captain wore a see-through dress.” Especially when the title of the book is “Scandal on Plum Island” and the author, Marian Lindberg, a journalist and attorney, notes on the cover that it’s a true story. This historical account, however, is not about conspirators’ favorite subject, germ warfare, on this windswept island in Gardiners Bay that’s still closed to the public, but about allegations of homosexuality against a commanding officer, when Plum Island housed an army base in 1914. A few years ago Lindberg had been reading a history of Plum Island when she came across the hitherto unknown case of Major Benjamin Koehler, who had been arrested for Conduct Unbecoming An Officer and Gentleman, and court-martialed. She persuasively argues that the invisibility of this case says a lot about the power of the military to harass antagonists, wage an unjust legal campaign, and put a lid on history. But it’s the larger