JEFFERSON: A NOVEL

In the magnificent tradition if Gore Vidal's Lincoln and Burr, Max Byrd reveals a Thomas Jefferson we've never met before... It is 1784, and Jefferson, the newly appointed American ambassador to the court of Louis Xvi and Marie-Antoinette had just arrived in Paris-a city adrift in intrigue, upheaval, and temptation that will challenge his principles, incite his passions, and change Thomas Jefferson forever... Through the eyes of his impressionable young secretary, William Short, we watch as the future president builds his dream of an America with fellow patriots John Adams and Ben Franklin, and as he struggles between political ambition and an unexpected crisis of the heart with a woman who has the power to destroy him. And we discover-behind the face the complex Virginian show the world-an enigmatic statesman who fights for individual liberty even as he keeps the slave, who champions freewill even a he denies it to his daughters, and who fights for individual liberty even as he keeps slaves, who champions free will even as he denied it to his daughters, and who holds men to the highest standards of honor-even as he embarks on a shadowy double life of his own...


From the Paperback edition.