Tom O'Brien
Written for a wide audience, and laced with racy passages, Citizen Washington reflects a new tide in academia: history from the bottom up....This fiction is so complex in its understanding of humanity to seem actually true. -- USA Today
Publishers Weekly
- Publisher's Weekly
Appearing on the bicentennial of Washington's death, Martin's (Annapolis) brisk, engaging and far from worshipful portrayal of the childless father of this country is told from multiple points of view by those who knew him. The first president, war hero and political icon has hardly died when Hesperus Draper, an old nemesis of Washington's and the publisher of a political scandal sheet called Alexandria Gazette, is tipped off that Washington was not all that he appeared to be. Martha is seen burning his letters shortly after his death in an apparent attempt to hide some dark secret. Draper asks his nephew, Christopher, who narrates introductory passages in the first person, to investigate, taking him and the reader on a far-reaching trip through Washington's past. The characters who record their impressions of the late founding father range from Martha, his wife, to Jacob, his slave; his physician, Dr. James Craike; a loyal aide de camp; and such other historical figures as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Overall, the narratives are lively, rendered in the colloquialisms of the era (though the black dialect may be off-putting to some readers). Washington emerges as less than perfect, a man whose private peccadilloes and initial setbacks in pursuing a career became secondary to his emerging talents as a leader and statesman. According to the narrative, he had an affair with another man's wife before marrying Martha. He was not in fact cut out for politics and would have preferred being a wealthy landowner. Eschewing opportunities to render his subject's life in a sensational manner, Martin exercises considerable restraint in sticking closely to the historical details and social constructs of the time. Yet he enlivens the novel with ribald humor and even some graphic sex scenes, meanwhile humanizing Washington and delivering an entertaining slice of history. Agent, Robert Gottlieb. Author tour. (Feb.) FYI: Martin wrote the PBS documentary George Washington: The Man Who Wouldn't Be King.
Library Journal
A new look at our first president from an author whose best sellers retell U.S. history.
Kirkus Reviews
Compelling biographical fiction that probes the unlikelihoods and uncertainties behind George Washington's hallowed historical presence. Another fictional rendering that hunts for the man behind the myth, told in Rashomon-like narratives attributed to real and imaginary eyewitnesses, from a skillful school-of-Michener epic novelist (Annapolis) and nonfictional historian of the religious right (With God on Our Side). The conceit that starts the tale is a mystery: Why did Martha "Patsy" Washington burn a collection of personal letters on the night her husband died? Just after Washington is buried, crusty Hesperus Draper, a self-made colonial who worked his way up from tidewater trader to colonial solider, landholder, and anti-Federalist newspaper publisher, pays his naive, youthful writer-wannabe nephew, Christopher Draper, a king's ransom to find out what those letters may have contained. He advises Christopher to pretend to be writing a biography of Washington in order to gain access to those who knew Washington while he was alive. Martin's story takes shape in the form of Christopher's vernacular notes, supplemented by conveniently discovered written memoirs from those who died before Washington. The visceral, blood-in-the-trenches recollections of the fictional Hesperus, and the brotherly affections of Washington's slave, Jacob, are among the best of many vividly imaginative constructions. We also get strikingly different glimpses of Washington from Silverheels, a Native American; from Washington's coquettish lover, Mrs. Sarah "Sally" Fairfax; from the fretful Martha; and from Washington's numerous political and military rivals. These contrary impressions reveal apostmodern enigma: a conflicted character whose every act was darkened by premonitions of failure-the kind of leader "that if he had not really been one of the best intentioned men in the world might have been a very dangerous one." A strongly satisfying, eminently readable saga that suggests we'll never completely understand, or condone, the contradictions and inconsistencies of which great leaders are made.
