MY THEODOSIA

Here is a story that needs no fictionization to make it one of the most fascinating in history, the story of Aaron Burr and his daughter. A picture of the man, brilliant, unrupulous, ambitious, debonair,-- but to his daughter, entirely flawless, even when he her marriage to a South Carolinian planter for the sake of his own ambitions and financial needs. Then the lifelong conflict in her life between her passion for Merwether Lewis, who put honor and discretion and a career before their love, and her acceptance of necessity in her marriage to Joseph Alston. Burr's own sensational career, the enmity between Burr and Hamilton, Burr and Jefferson, the duel, the plot for empire, the trial, the exile. The author, while making the most of her material, has managed to sustain an objective viewpoint towards her characters (at some sacrifice of the sympathy she might have claimed).