#colonialfiction

My rating: **** This book was primarily upsetting, quite frankly. It was very well written and engaging, and I loved (in some ways) the fact that it was as historically accurate as a “novel” could be, drawn from Patsy Jefferson’s correspondences and those letters she curated of her father’s. But my big takeaway was that being a woman back then *sucked.* I mean, to some degree I knew that, but this really drove it home. Patsy’s husband Tom is an abusive insecure creep who eventually goes mad from bitterness and anger–and she makes excuses for him, for most of her life. Her son-in-law is even worse, literally beating her very pregnant daughter to the point where she and the baby both die. But because of the world they live in, they’re taught to submit–the law is on their husbands’ side, no matter what he does. There’s no accountability at all. I’m having nightmares about it. Also, everybody dies young, of what are now totally preventable causes! Childbirth killed Patsy’s mother, her sister, and then the daughter (who died of a combo of injuries from her abusive husband and from the birth). And creditors are after everybody–I didn’t realize that Thomas Jefferson died virtually penniless, mostly because he kept attempting to bail out his good-for-nothing sons-in-law. He was against slavery for the most part, but because the system was what it was, he couldn’t free them without jeopardizing his entire family. Before reading this, I blamed him for holding slaves, and especially for taking Sally, one of his slaves, as a mistress–so much worse when I learned that Sally was his late wife’s half-sister! But he truly loved her, and she him. They had children together, and for a variety of complicated political reasons he had to be covert about setting her and her children free. There was some politics, too, but not as much as you might think. The story wasn’t a page-turner per se, but it was engaging. If you like happy stories, though, this probably isn’t for you. #bookstagram #colonialfiction https://www.instagram.com/authorcagray/p/BuB9wGNnevw/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=2eihukr9d6uo