A review by hiltzmoore
America's First Daughter by Laura Kamoie, Stephanie Dray

5.0

This was everything a good historical fiction should be. I was hesitant going into this book, thinking that it was going to be 500+ pages of Martha Jefferson being upset that her father had a relationship with Sally Hemmings. While a great deal of the book had this as an undercurrent, Martha's life had so many other fascinating circumstances and the authors did a great job pulling all these circumstances together into a cohesive and comprehensive story. I might be ready to read a Jefferson biography now after hesitating for years because he's not very likable. This book doesn't hide the family's flaws, but asks the reader to take them in as a part of the complicated truth of our country's history. My favorite thing about this book was that the dialogue was not written with completely modern linguistic structure. It wasn't entirely 18th/19th century styling either, but managed to pull the reader into an older time without making the entire book difficult to read. That's the first time I've seen that in a historical fiction book and that was very well done.