{"product_id":"monticello-a-daughter-and-her-father-a-novel-isbn-9780062320445","title":"Monticello: A Daughter and Her Father; A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the critically acclaimed author of \u003cem\u003eThe Widow's War\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter 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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs 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.”\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003eAfter the early death of her mother, young Martha Jefferson accompanied her father, Thomas Jefferson, on his first diplomatic mission to Paris. Five years later, father and daughter have come home to Monticello, the family’s beloved plantation in the Virginia countryside. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThough Monticello has suffered from her father’s absence, Martha finds it essentially unchanged, even as she has been transformed. The sheltered girl who sailed to Europe is now a handsome seventeen-year-old woman with a battle-scarred heart who sees a world far more complicated than it once seemed. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMartha has long abhorred slavery and yearned for its swift end. Yet she now discovers that the home she adores is burdened by growing debt and cannot survive long without the labor of its slaves. As her father returns to government, he becomes increasingly distracted by tumultuous fights for power and troubling attachments. And as Martha begins to pay closer attention to Sally Hemings—the beautiful light-skinned slave long acknowledged to be her mother’s half-sister—she realizes that the slave’s position in the household has subtly changed. Eager for distraction, Martha welcomes the attentions of Thomas Randolph, her exotic distant cousin, but soon she uncovers burdens and desires in him that threaten to compromise her own.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“Cabot shines in her descriptions of colonial life, in her fictionalized rendition of Ben Franklin’s charismatic personality and wide-ranging intellect, but especially in interpreting Franklin the man through Anne, a fully-realized, memorable character. It is Anne who brings imagined reality’s magic to the narrative. Intriguing historical fiction; a laudable interpretation of colonial life.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews on Benjamin Franklin's Bastard\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Unforgettable.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness on Benjamin Franklin's Bastard\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Why do readers love historical fiction? Read \u003ci\u003eBenjamin Franklin’s Bastard\u003c\/i\u003e and find out. It brings a forgotten time so skillfully to life that we feel as if we are there. It mesmerizes us with characters that are as like us in so many ways but so different, too. It fills our senses. It carries us to places where the historian seldom goes and answers questions that the historian may only speculate upon. And in the process, it brings us face to face with the truths that are the most profound in any era. This is a superb novel. Don’t miss it.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWilliam Martin, New York Times bestselling author of Cape Cod and The Lincoln Letter on Benjamin Franklin's Bastard\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Gunning’s new historical novel is a brilliant exploration of what it meant to be a slave owner in antebellum Virginia where farming depended on slaves, and their presence in the household gave them an intimacy with family members that could be both comforting and threatening . . . Highly recommended . . .  an engrossing tale of a strong woman in tumultuous times, with deftly interwoven historical details that make her trials all the more authentic.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[A] highly researched and gracefully presented novel . . . [with] both muscle and drive.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist on MONTICELLO\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Gunning . . . does an elegant job of re-creating history in a novel that portrays the passions and disappointments of the people making that history.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCape Cod Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"William Morrow Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44888228626661,"sku":"NP9780062320445","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062320445.jpg?v=1730228521","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/monticello-a-daughter-and-her-father-a-novel-isbn-9780062320445","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}