Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings
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Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings is a 2016 historical fiction novel by American writer Stephen O'Connor. The novel depicts the relationship between Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, and Sally Hemings, his slave and sister-in-law. The depiction, which portrayed the relationship as consensual and romantic, was the focus of controversy due to questions about Hemings's status as a slave and her age difference with Jefferson.
The novel utilizes several storytelling devices through which O'Connor depicts a fictionalized account of the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson. Per the book jacket, " 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."[1]
Development
O'Connor chose to title the novel Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings after discussing it with his editor, as there was concern that the title "indicated that this book was neither nonfiction—history or biography—nor a conventional historical novel." He further noted that the novel presented Jefferson who "has and lacks power simultaneously" and that the novel's dream-like and surreal states was chosen because he "wanted to render some of the complexity of the real world, especially when it comes to someone like Jefferson, whose character seems such a mix of the admirable and despicable that his biographer, Joseph Ellis, called him an "American Sphinx." During his time developing the book, Steven O'Connor, who taught non-fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College, gave his students the assignment to use research to write their own stories about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. "[2]