Description

The exceptional untold tale of Thomas Jefferson’s 3 daughters— white and loose, one black and enslaved—and the divergent paths they solid in a newly unbiased America
 
FINALIST FOR THE GEORGE WASHINGTON PRIZE • “Fantastically written . . . To a nuanced examine of Jefferson’s white daughters, Martha and Maria, [Kerrison] innovatively provides a dialogue of his best enslaved daughter, Harriet Hemings.”—The New York Occasions E book Review

Thomas Jefferson had 3 daughters: Martha and Maria through his spouse, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet through his slave Sally Hemings. Even if the 3 girls shared a father, the similarities finish there. Martha and Maria gained an exceptional convent faculty training even as they lived with their father all the way through his diplomatic posting in Paris. When they lower back house, on the other hand, the sisters discovered their choices restricted through the rules and customs of early The us. Harriet Hemings adopted a unique trail. She escaped slavery—it sounds as if with the help of Jefferson himself. Leaving Monticello at the back of, she boarded a train and induce for a decidedly unsure long term.
 
For this groundbreaking triple biography, historical past student Catherine Kerrison has exposed by no means-prior to-printed files written through the Jefferson sisters, in addition to letters written through participants of the Jefferson and Hemings households. The richly interwoven tales of those sturdy girls and their struggle to form their very own destinies shed new mild on problems with race and gender which might be nonetheless related these days—and at the legacy of considered one of our such a lot debatable Founding Fathers.
 
Praise for Jefferson’s Daughters
 
“An interesting glimpse of the place we’ve been as a country . . . Catherine Kerrison tells us the tales of 3 of Thomas Jefferson’s youngsters, who, because of their gender and race, lived lives whose such a lot intimate main points are misplaced to time.”—USA Today

“A helpful addition to the historical past of Modern-technology The us.”—The Boston Globe

“A idea-upsetting nonfiction narrative that reads like a unique.”—BookPage