Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings: A Novel

Author: O'Connor, Stephen

Color: Multicolor

Edition: Reprint

Number Of Pages: 624

Details:

“Dazzling. . . The most revolutionary reimagining of Jefferson’s life ever.” –Ron Charles, Washington PostWinner of the Crook’s Corner Book PrizeLonglisted for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel PrizeA debut novel about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, in whose story the conflict between the American ideal of equality and the realities of slavery and racism played out in the most tragic of terms.   Novels such as Toni Morrison’s  Beloved,  The Known World by Edward P. Jones, James McBride’s  The Good Lord Bird and  Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks are a part of a long tradition of American fiction that plumbs the moral and human costs of history in ways that nonfiction simply can't. Now Stephen O’Connor joins this company with a profoundly original exploration of the many ways that the institution of slavery warped the human soul, as seen through the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. O’Connor’s protagonists are rendered via scrupulously researched scenes of their lives in Paris and at Monticello that alternate with a harrowing memoir written by Hemings after Jefferson’s death, as well as with dreamlike sequences in which Jefferson watches a movie about his life, Hemings fabricates an "invention" that becomes the whole world, and they run into each other "after an unimaginable length of time" on the New York City subway. O'Connor is unsparing in his rendition of the hypocrisy of the Founding Father and slaveholder who wrote "all men are created equal,” while enabling Hemings to tell her story in a way history has not allowed her to. His important and beautifully written novel is a deep moral reckoning, a story about the search for justice, freedom and an ideal world—and about the survival of hope even in the midst of catastrophe.

Reviews:

Praise for Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

“The most revolutionary reimagining of Jefferson’s life ever. . .what a dazzling experience this book is for the intrepid reader. . . O’Connor’s deeply humane treatment of Sally, whose actual thoughts will never be known to us, is the novel’s most haunting accomplishment. Ultimately, this is a book in vigorous debate with itself, as strange and contradictory as the author of the Declaration of Independence. With its magically engineered collection of fiction, history, and fantasy, and particularly with its own capacious spirit, Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings doesn’t just knock Jefferson off his pedestal, it blows us over, too, shatters the whole sinner-saint debate and clears out new room to reconsider these two impossibly different people who once gave birth to the United States. It’s heartbreaking. It’s cathartic. It’s utterly brilliant.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post  

“In hundreds of brief, pointillist chapters, Mr. O’Connor reimagines their decades-long relationship . . . The effect is prismatic and utterly arresting  . . . Hemings is the novel’s outstanding character, eloquent and capable, morally exacting and self-aware, now overflowing with tenderness, now seething with hatred. Jefferson cuts a far more ambivalent figure, unmatched in intelligence but often paralyzed by guilt.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Ambitious doesn't begin to describe the scope of the project O'Connor undertook. And successful doesn't begin to describe the wildly imaginative techniques he used to realize his authorial goal, which is clearly to humanize

— equalize, you might say — the two members of this passionate, conflicted couple . . . What makes these literary gymnastics work is, in a word, talent . . . What justifies the risk is his insistence on using a full palette and tiny brushes to draw these characters, rejecting broad brush strokes in black and white. Rendered in all their complex, contradictory glory, Jefferson and Hemings seem to stand up on the page.’"

—The Chicago Tribune

“A brave and wondrous dream of a novel. . .[Hemings] is one of history’s numberless mystery women, but ...

EAN: 9780143128892

Release Date: 02-05-2017

Languages: English

Item Note: New and unused. Paperback Used - Like New Ships fast! 2017Reprint

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew

Binding: Paperback