I was so excite for this, and that's why I was SO disappointed.
I wanted to read about Jefferson's DAUGHTERS... not spend chapter after chapter reading about Jefferson with barely a mention of any of his daughters except maybe "oh and his daughter was there too,"
SO dry, SO boring. Not recommended.

I am not a historian by either inclination or education. I come from the upper Midwest and was not familiar with either Southern ways nor racial diversity. I chose to read this book because I was interested in the lives of women in the post Revolutionary era. Professor Kerrison examines the live of 3 very different women. Martha and Maria are the daughters of Thomas Jefferson and his wife Martha. Harriet Hemings is Jefferson's daughter by slave Sally Hemings. Eldest daughter Martha traveled with Jefferson to France where she was educated in a convent school. Besides the typical studies of music, dance and needlework, the sisters taught Martha in subjects more frequently reserved for young men. Social contact with Jefferson's political and personal acquaintances introduced her to many educated, sophisticated, politically aware women. She grew into a woman who loved reading and the accumulation of knowledge. Younger daughter Maria stayed with relatives for the majority of Jefferson's time in Paris. She stayed with a family where she was loved, coddled and schooled in the traditional role of a Southern plantation owners wife. She joined her sister and father in Paris for a short time but was resistant to education in languages, literature, mathematics and geography. Sally accompanied the Jefferson's to Paris and returned with them after exacting a promise from Jefferson that their children would be freed from slavery at adulthood. Harriet and was raised as an upper level slave with freedoms not enjoyed by other household slaves. She was eventually trained in the skill of spinning.

Author Kerrison adroitly incorporated known facts about these three women with blanks filled in by describing the typical lives of women in their place in society, often positing several possibilities of action. Her narratives present an interesting study of their lives, roles in society and the general attitudes toward women in different levels of society. After marrying a suitable but not very robust or successful man, Martha directed her love of learning to educating her many children and assisting her rather remote father. Maria, on the other hand, married a loving, successful man and happily lived the life of a planter's wife. Her marriage was plagued with stillborn children and poor health. She died in childbirth leaving one son and a grieving widower. Little is know of Harriet's life beyond a few bare facts but Kerrison describes well the life of an upper slave in that era. She came from a large and loving family. As she approached the age where she would be freed, according to Sally's bargain with Jefferson, she left her family and the plantation...possibly with the assistance of her brother and to a small degree Jefferson himself. She vanished into the Washington (DC) area where, later accounts tell us, she passed for white, married and had a family. She, perhaps, had the happiest life of all three of Jefferson's daughters.

I loved the descriptions of the everyday lives of these three women. I was fascinated by information on the political climates, emerging philosophies concerning women's roles and rights, and on the eye-opening slave culture in the post Revolutionary US. I felt badly for these three women who were locked into the cultures in which they were born and wished I could reach back in time to tell them that some things will change and that, sadly, other things haven't.