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With his normal storytelling flair and unrivaled research, Tom Fleming offers a powerful, intimate go through the founders-George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Adam Madison-and the women who enjoyed essential roles in their lives. From hot-tempered Mary Ball Washington to promiscuous Rachel Lavien Hamilton, the founding fathers' moms powerfully designed their sons' visions of home life. But enthusiasts and wives enjoyed more critical roles as friends and often partners in fame. We learn of the younger Washington's tortured love for the coquettish Sarah Fairfax, partner of his good friend; of Franklin's two "wives," one in London and one in Philadelphia; of Adams's long absences, which required a lonely, deeply disappointed Abigail to keep home and family alongside one another for years at a time; of Hamilton's adulterous betrayal of his partner and their reconciliation; and the way the amazing Madison was jilted with a flirtatious fifteen-year-old and went on to marry the effervescent Dolley, who helped make this shy man into a favorite leader. Jefferson's controversial marriage to Sally Hemings is also evaluated, with another vision of where his heart and soul lay. Fleming nimbly will take us through significant amounts of early American background, as the founding fathers strove to reconcile their private and general public lives, often beset with a media just as gossip-seeking and inflammatory as ours today. He offers a powerful go through the challenges women encountered in the late eighteenth and early on 19th centuries. While often amazing and articulate, the wives of the founding fathers all battled with the distractions and risks of frequent childbearing and searing stress about newborn mortality. All the more remarkable, then, these women loomed so large in the lives with their husbands-and, in some instances, their country.
