America's First Daughter: A Novel(196)

Steph: Erased even. And I will never forget the particularly emotional tour we took focusing on slavery at Monticello. Our fellow tourists were a mix of all ages and backgrounds. At one point, a nine-year-old African American boy, wearing wire-rim spectacles much like Jefferson’s, asked what life would have been like for him if he had been a slave at Monticello. Our tour guide, Tom Nash, did not shy away from the question and his powerful explanation about the injustice of slavery prompted a white boy around the same age to ask how a man like Jefferson could have written all men are created equal while continuing to own slaves. It was a poignant moment for many reasons, not least of which was the clear demonstration that hundreds of years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, citizens of all ages and from across the country still gather on Jefferson’s mountaintop to wrestle with the painful contradictions of our nation’s founding.





Reading Group Guide


1. If Thomas Jefferson’s wife hadn’t died, how might he and his daughter have lived different lives? Historically, Jefferson is said to have made a deathbed promise to his wife, and in the novel his daughter makes one as well. How might their lives have differed if they hadn’t made those deathbed promises?

2. As portrayed in the novel and in their letters to each other, how would you describe Jefferson and Patsy’s relationship with each other? Was Jefferson a good father? Did he change as a father over the course of the novel? Was Patsy a good daughter?

3. Does seeing Jefferson through his daughter’s eyes make him more relatable as a Founding Father? How so or why not?

4. The limited choices women had available to them in the Revolutionary era is one theme explored in this book. What were the most important choices Patsy made throughout her life? Do you agree with why she made them? Could or should she have chosen differently?

5. What did you think of Sally’s choice to return to Virginia with Jefferson? Why did she make that decision? What were her alternatives and how viable were they?

6. Another theme explored in this book is sacrifice. What does Patsy sacrifice in her effort to protect her father? What did Jefferson sacrifice? What did Sally sacrifice? What did William Short sacrifice?

7. Why does Patsy think her father needs to be protected? Why does she think she is the only one to do it? In what ways does she protect him? What do you think of Patsy’s effort to protect Jefferson? Would you have done the same thing?

8. How are Patsy’s views on slavery portrayed in this novel? What factors influence her thinking? How do her views differ from her father’s or from William Short’s?

9. Why did Patsy decide to marry Thomas Mann Randolph Jr.? How would you describe their relationship and how did their relationship change over time?

10. Why can’t or won’t Patsy cry? Why does she finally cry in the final scene at Monticello?

11. Do you agree with William that Monticello was “a set of chains”? Why not or how so? Were you on William’s or Patsy’s side during their fight in the final scene at Monticello?

12. In what ways did Patsy shape her father’s legacy? In what ways did she shape our own? In what ways is she America’s First Daughter?





Read on


For Further Reading


Fiction

Flight of the Sparrow: A Novel of Early America by Amy Belding Brown Jack Absolute by C. C. Humphreys The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry Jefferson’s Sons: A Founding Father’s Secret Children by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley The Midwife’s Revolt by Jody Daynard The President’s Daughter by Barbara Chase-Riboud Redcoat by Bernard Cornwell

Sally Hemings by Barbara Chase-Riboud Thieftaker by D. B. Jackson

The Traitor’s Wife by Allison Pataki Turncoat by Donna Thorlund

Nonfiction

American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1848 by George Green Shackelford Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello by Andrew Burstein Jeffersonian Legacies by Peter S. Onuf Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 by Mary Beth Norton Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times by Cynthia Kierner Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves by Henry Wiencek The Mind of Thomas Jefferson by Peter S. Onuf Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government by Catherine Allgor Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture by Jan Lewis and Peter S. Onuf Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson’s America by Cynthia Kierner Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson by Paul Finkelman Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait by Fawn Brodie Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy by Annette Gordon-Reed “Those Who Labor for My Happiness”: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello by Lucia Stanton Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson by Alan Pell Crawford The Women Jefferson Loved by Virginia Scharff Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America by Linda Kerber

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Advance Praise for America’s First Daughter


“A delectable and poignant read. . . . It deftly draws on the volatile atmosphere of Jefferson’s time, recounting his daughter’s little-known story—a heroine tested to the limit, loaded with grit and determination. All the right chords are struck here. You’re going to want to read slow and savor this one. Bravo.”