Monticello

A Daughter and Her Father; A Novel

By: Sally Cabot Gunning

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

From the critically acclaimed author of The Widow's War comes a captivating work of literary historical fiction that explores the tenuous relationship between a brilliant and complex father and his devoted daughter—Thomas Jefferson and Martha Jefferson Randolph.

After the death of her beloved mother, Martha Jefferson spent five years abroad with her father, Thomas Jefferson, on his first diplomatic mission to France. Now, at seventeen, Jefferson’s bright, handsome eldest daughter is returning to the lush hills of the family’s beloved Virginia plantation, Monticello. While the large, beautiful estate is the same as she remembers, Martha has changed. The young girl that sailed to Europe is now a woman with a heart made heavy by a first love gone wrong.

The world around her has also become far more complicated than it once seemed. The doting father she idolized since childhood has begun to pull away. Moving back into political life, he has become distracted by the tumultuous fight for power and troubling new attachments. The home she adores depends on slavery, a practice Martha abhors. But Monticello is burdened by debt, and it cannot survive without the labor of her family’s slaves. The exotic distant cousin she is drawn to has a taste for dangerous passions, dark desires that will eventually compromise her own.

As her life becomes constrained by the demands of marriage, motherhood, politics, scandal, and her family’s increasing impoverishment, Martha yearns to find her way back to the gentle beauty and quiet happiness of the world she once knew at the top of her father’s “little mountain.”

Fictional Masterpiece

Capturing old world struggles, with modern day words. I had such a good time listening and reading this book. I first read this book 4 years ago and recently dove into the audio version. I'm happy to say, it was as good the second time as it was the first.

It must have been such a joy to bring these pinnacle characters of American history back to life when writing this book. make sure to give this one a listen.

Very good Narrator !

Really enjoyed this fictional account of historical events - couldn't stop listening !!
Narrator made it even better.

Wonderful

This story is so well-told and engrossing. I’m very glad to have chosen it. I read Lewis & Clark with its many references to Thomas Jefferson and, altho, they aren’t mentioned in this book, I can see in this book where they fit in. I truly love good historical fiction and this book is such!