Sally Hemings: A Novel (Rediscovered Classics) [Paperback]

Barbara Chase-Riboud (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2009 | Series: Rediscovered Classics

One of the greatest love stories in American history is also one of the most controversial. Thomas Jefferson had a mistress for 38 years whom he loved and lived with until he died—the beautiful and elusive Sally Hemings. But it was not simply that Jefferson had a mistress that provoked such a scandal in both his time and ours. It was that Sally Hemings was a quadroon slave and that Jefferson fathered a slave family whose descendants are alive today. In this moving novel, originally published in 1979 and having sold over two million copies worldwide, Barbara Chase-Riboud re-creates one of America’s most powerful love stories, based on the documents and evidence of the day, and gives us a poignant, tragic, and unforgettable meditation on the history of race and sex in America.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When this stirring work by Philadelphia-born Paris-based sculptress and historical-fiction writer Barbara Chase-Riboud first appeared in 1979, it was dismissed by many mainstream historians as "hogwash." But with DNA evidence proving that Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, did indeed father at least one child by his black slave mistress, Sally Hemings, Chase-Riboud's book deserves a new read. With her painstaking eye for research, Chase-Riboud unfolds a complex 19th-century quilt of miscegenation, denial, hypocrisy, slavery and, yes, love in Virginia. She brings to life Heming's relationship with Martha, her half-sister and the President's wife on his Monticello estate; Jefferson's seduction of Hemings in Paris after Martha's death; and his lifelong concubinage of Hemings until his own death, when she and her offspring were freed. Chase-Riboud avoids the sentimental "tragic-mulatto trap" that other writers have fallen into when they deal with slave relations by making Hemings not only multidimensional and believable, but, given late-20th-century political scandals, chillingly contemporary. Along with the novel's other sub-themes, including black disenfranchisement and the fear of reenslavement, Riboud intimates that Jefferson-- despite his racist rantings in Notes on the State of Virginia, which Chase-Riboud uses as epigraphs--may have actually loved this black woman, and that the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings was perhaps the clearest example of the American imperative of "seeking a more perfect union," a controversial portrayal that Chase-Riboud makes plausible with skillfully written prose. --Eugene Holley Jr. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The relationship must have been much as the author depicts it in this fine first novel: a mixture of love and hate, of tenderness and cruelty and of freedom and bondage. The book is well researched, well written, insightful, and entertaining. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

“[An] extremely affecting and poetic first novel. Even if historical fact and careful supposition were not the story’s basis, the Jefferson-Hemings relationship the novelist has imagined would be unforgettable.” —The New Republic

“A bold undertaking. The portrait of Jefferson is brilliantly imagined.” —Larry McMurtry, New York Magazine

“Chase-Riboud, an unusually gifted writer, has taken a stunning historical idea and made it sing with life. The characters and settings–the Hemings family and the Jefferson of Paris and Monticello–are vivid. Sally Hemings is a beautiful novel: the writing is eloquent, the story haunting.” —Grand Rapids Press

 

“Haunting . . . powerful and touching.” —The Denver Post

“Her novelistic abilities are impressive: she writes with grace and force, has an eye for detail and an ear for dialogue, a sense of scene and a capacity to create believable and interesting characters . . . Intelligently, even brilliantly imagined.” - The New Yorker

“Exquisitely crafted . . . a sensitive life study of a truly exceptional woman: complex, courageous, irresistibly attractive.” —Cosmopolitan

“The Thomas Jefferson–Sally Hemings legend is as deeply embedded in American mythology as John Henry. Barbara Chase-Riboud has captured all of the power, pain and ironic beauty which make the legend persist. It is a very moving and human novel.” —Nathan Huggins, author of Black Odyssey

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press; Reprint edition (April 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556529457
• ISBN-13: 978-1556529450
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #157,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Facinating! "Proved" what I encountered at age 12., June 8, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Concord,NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sally Hemings: A Novel (Paperback)

When I was a young adolescent, my Illini-Germanic American and immigrant family and I went to Monticello. I inquired as to why there was a "trap door" into Jefferson's bedroom and was told that Mr. Jefferson used the space above his bedroom to store clothing, etc. I didn't believe it, Thanks be to God! Many years later, I learned of this book while living in Durham, NC. I found a copy in a used bookstore and read it and realized that my adolescent suspicions were grounded in hidden truths! Barbara Chase-Riboud charaturization of the Life of Jefferson is NOW something that the tour guides of Monticellio do reference. (Wonders never Cease!) The recent DNA studies and the fact that the some of the members of Thomas Jefferson's family have acknowledged the Hemmings as their Family members will no doubt bring this "long forgotten" historical-"fiction" novel into it's own. Hopefully, the re-publication of the work will benifit the Great-great-grand children of Sally Hemmings and will likewise recognize the other works of Barbara Chase-Riboud as well as other "Afro-American" Female writers who dared/dare to record American History NOT as "An American Controversy" but as This United State s of American History. Sally Hemmings is clearly in this work a Beacon of Light for the WOMEN of this Nation as Rosa Parks was/is. WOMEN of this Nation who dare to explore "where they came from" and "where their Strength" lies Embodied" will find in Sally Hemmings, as she speaks today from Barbara's novel, a Woman who lives more fully than she could enjoy herself when she was alive: in the world she was birthed into, she was not recognized as a Woman. Sally Hemmings today cannot escape the attention of any man or woman of Integrity. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings are NOT "An American Contoversery". Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings are, for those of us of Integrity, Founders of THIS Unitied States of America -- now fighting against the "ethnic cleansing" elsewhere!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great historical fiction..., October 13, 2003

By 

Felicia Latoya Brown (Willingboro, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sally Hemings: A Novel (Paperback)

Barbara Chase-Riboud did an amazing job with creating fiction using true historical documentation. It was a compelling and informational read. One of my friends recommended it, and I am glad she did. If you want to read about Sally Hemings and get as close to an accurate information, this is probably as close as you can get. The quotes from Jefferson's writings and other documents connect this story like nothing else I have read. Definitely a must for history buffs.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why hasn't this sort of story been more widely told?, August 5, 2000

By 

Marguerite Le - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sally Hemings: A Novel (Paperback)

I always vaguely admired Thomas Jefferson and knew that he was an interesting sort of man and quite the genius. However, I was completely surprised and interested to read about his relationship with Sally Hemings. I couldn't put this book down and I resolved to read more about Sally Hemings. How sickening and dreadful we "humans" have treated each other and still treat each other! How could Jefferson had slaves? (How could anyone?)

I think that this sort of book should be required reading in high schools and colleges instead of some of the deadly boring books assigned in Lit classes. Most people don't think about and don't know how people of color and how women have been so ignored, disrespected and hidden in American history.

SALLY HEMINGS is a novel, but this story tells the sad truth of slaves and women. I'd recommend it for men and women... It's a good read and it's thought-provoking... There are women in parts of the world in similar circumstance right now and we are oblivious to their situations. Hopefully, their stories won't stay buried as the story of SALLY HEMINGS has been.

Good book. I really recommend it.