America's First Daughter: A Novel(193)
We’d have been lost without the amazing resources at Monti cello.org and the cache of digitized letters the National Archives makes available at founders.archives.gov.
We’d also like to thank our families for their cheerleading and support. Our thanks, too, to Megan Brett for helping us to research things like judicial wigs, and for retrieving photographs of original letters for us from the University of Virginia. Additionally, we’d like to thank Jean Slattery for buying Stephanie that first Jefferson book all those years ago and inspiring an obsession; our editor, Amanda Bergeron, for being as excited about this story as we were; our agent, Kevan Lyon, for being our lioness on this project; Leslie Carrol for details about prerevolutionary France; and Kate Quinn for critiquing the manuscript.
Our bibliography is too extensive to list here, but we wanted to acknowledge especially our reliance on the letters of Jefferson, his family, friends, colleagues, contemporaries, and biographers in providing period-appropriate language, descriptions, and viewpoints. Additionally, we must cite the authoritative Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello and Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson’s America by Cynthia Kierner, from whom we adopted many theories and characterizations; also, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed, by which we were heavily influenced; Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait by Fawn Brodie, whose groundbreaking work helped inspire this book; Flight from Monticello: Jefferson at War by Michael Kranish; Sally Hemings, the beautiful novel written by Barbara Chase-Riboud, whose iconic portrayal of Sally inspired our own; Jefferson’s Adoptive Son by George Green Shackelford; The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris and The French Revolution of 1789 as viewed in light of republican institutions by John Stevens Cabot Abbott, whose descriptions of France and the chronology of the revolution we adopted; The Plantation Mistress by Catherine Clinton, whose exploration of the complaints of women on plantations our heroine echoes; Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves by Henry Wiencek whose controversial book gave us a much needed counterweight to our heroine’s too-cheery assessment of her father; Twilight at Monticello by Alan Pell Crawford; the memoirs of Casanova, for inspiring period-appropriate romantic gestures; The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson by William Howard Adams; The Women Jefferson Loved by Virginia Scharff; and Parlor Politics by Catherine Allgor. More sources and resources can be found at AmericasFirstDaughter.com.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . . *
About the authors
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Meet Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
About the book
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The Paris Letters—New Details About the Life of Our “Cher Jeffy”
Walking in Patsy Jefferson’s Footsteps: A Conversation with the Authors
Reading Group Guide
Read on
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For Further Reading
About the authors
Meet Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
STEPHANIE DRAY is an award-winning, bestselling, and two time RITA Award–nominated author of historical women’s fiction. Her critically acclaimed series about Cleopatra’s daughter has been translated into eight different languages and won NJRW’s Golden Leaf. As Stephanie Draven, she is a national bestselling author of genre fiction and American-set historical women’s fiction. She is a frequent panelist and presenter at national writing conventions and lives near the nation’s capital. Before she became a novelist, Stephanie was a lawyer, a game designer, and a teacher. Now she uses the stories of women in history to inspire the young women of today.
LAURA KAMOIE has always been fascinated by the people, stories, and physical presence of the past, which led her to a lifetime of historical and archaeological study and training. She holds a doctoral degree in early American history from the College of William and Mary, has published two nonfiction books on early America, and most recently held the position of Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy before transitioning to a full-time career writing genre fiction as Laura Kaye, the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books. Her debut historical novel, America’s First Daughter, coauthored with Stephanie Dray, allowed her the exciting opportunity to combine her love of history with her passion for storytelling. Laura lives amid the colonial charm of Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband and two daughters.
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About the book
The Paris Letters
New Details About the Life of Our “Cher Jeffy”
AMERICA’S FIRST DAUGHTER was many years in the making. From the dinner at a writers’ conference where we conceived of the idea to the crazy night we stayed up past 3 A.M. outlining the plot, to the many months of research and writing, it was always a labor of love. One that we were proud to finish in July 2015, when we handed in the corrected galleys for this novel and toasted our accomplishment.
As multi-published authors, we both know the sense of relief and pride that comes with finishing a book, but also the sadness at leaving beloved characters and their world behind. In this case, though, we felt confident that we’d uncovered everything that we could about Martha “Patsy” Randolph Jefferson.
So imagine our surprise when, on August 12, 2015, we saw an announcement from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation that a family of descendants had made publicly available a cache of new and previously unknown letters, most of which were addressed to the heroine of this novel during the years in which she lived in Paris.