About Monticello
• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (June 27, 2017)
From the critically acclaimed author of The Widow's War comes a captivating work of literary historical fiction that explores the tenuous relationship between a brilliant and complex father and his devoted daughter—Thomas Jefferson and Martha Jefferson Randolph.
After the death of her beloved mother, Martha Jefferson spent five years abroad with her father, Thomas Jefferson, on his first diplomatic mission to France. Now, at seventeen, Jefferson’s bright, handsome eldest daughter is returning to the lush hills of the family’s beloved Virginia plantation, Monticello. While the large, beautiful estate is the same as she remembers, Martha has changed. The young girl that sailed to Europe is now a woman with a heart made heavy by a first love gone wrong.
The world around her has also become far more complicated than it once seemed. The doting father she idolized since childhood has begun to pull away. Moving back into political life, he has become distracted by the tumultuous fight for power and troubling new attachments. The home she adores depends on slavery, a practice Martha abhors. But Monticello is burdened by debt, and it cannot survive without the labor of her family’s slaves. The exotic distant cousin she is drawn to has a taste for dangerous passions, dark desires that will eventually compromise her own.
As her life becomes constrained by the demands of marriage, motherhood, politics, scandal, and her family’s increasing impoverishment, Martha yearns to find her way back to the gentle beauty and quiet happiness of the world she once knew at the top of her father’s “little mountain.”
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Review: Monticello is a wonderful story that focuses on the life of Martha Jefferson, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson.I read America's First Daughter last year and I found myself drawing a lot of comparison's between the two novels as they were so closely related. I wish I could say that I liked them equally.
Besides the subject matter, Monticello shares the same well researched writing that I found with America's first daughter, which makes it a rather difficult read. I don't mean that in a bad way. Its difficult in the way that you have to really give care to every word or you might miss something.
Martha was surrounded by difficult men. Her father, of course, but also her husband. Tom Randolph is just not a man that you can like. I think I liked him even less in this book.
This is a great read for anyone that loves American history and historical fiction.
Rating: 4 flowers
About Sally Cabot Gunning
A lifelong resident of New England, Sally Cabot Gunning has immersed herself in its history from a young age. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Satucket Novels—The Widow’s War, Bound, and The Rebellion of Jane Clarke—and, writing as Sally Cabot, the equally acclaimed Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard. She lives in Brewster, Massachusetts, with her husband, Tom.
Find out more about Sally at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
1 comments:
For a long time I avoided reading stories from American history, thinking that they weren't as interesting as those from other parts of the world. But then I read a few great books set in America's past, and I realized how mistaken I had been.
This sounds like a fascinating and detailed read. I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for being a part of the tour.
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