My Dear Hamilton

Co-authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie have written their second colonial American novel about Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, titled My Dear Hamilton (William Morrow US / Piatkus UK, 2018). Their first authoring partnership was America’s First Daughter (William Morrow US / HarperCollins UK, 2016) about Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph.

We know that history has either forgotten women or pushed them into the shadow of husbands, fathers, or sons. In both of their co-authored books, Dray and Kamoie have successfully given a voice to two women, Patsy Jefferson and Eliza Hamilton, who bore witness to significant historical events and were influential in the shaping and founding of America. Eliza was the daughter of the prominent revolutionary general Philip Schuyler and traveled into the wilderness to attend Indian conventions with him. She fell in love with Washington’s aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton, and they married. She interacted with numerous important figures of the American Revolution, including at least twelve of the first sixteen presidents. She witnessed political maneuverings, dissent, and treachery among America’s Founding Fathers, and her husband was involved in America’s first political sex scandal. Eliza’s influence in Alexander’s career has been understated. She supported her husband and assisted him in many of his writings – most famous, the Federalist Papers and President Washington’s farewell address.

My Dear Hamilton is such a well-written, cohesive novel that it reads as if authored by only one person. I asked Dray and Kamoie about their collaborative process and how they were able to pull off such a unified and seamless book. “We plotted the book together using the known chronology of Eliza’s life, and then we chose which scenes each of us would write. As we finished a section of writing, we would hand it off to the other, and she would edit/revise/add freely. The vast majority of the time, we would agree with each other’s changes and just accept them. And on those rare occasions where we disagreed, we’d hash it out and always come up with a third solution far superior to anything we’d done on our own.”

The research that went into My Dear Hamilton is evident. Dray and Kamoie told me what that involved. “Our primary research for My Dear Hamilton was extensive and largely based on the Founders Online database on the National Archives website, which holds over 8,000 of Alexander Hamilton’s letters (and a few hundred of Eliza’s).1 We also did archival research at the New York Public Library, where the Schuyler papers are, and at the New York Historical Society, where we read letters that described Eliza’s life after her husband died by duel in 1804.” Although many of the historical sites relevant to Eliza’s life no longer exist, they were able to visit a few, including Eliza’s family home, the Schuyler Mansion, overlooking the Hudson River; the Hamiltons’ country estate, The Grange, now located in Harlem; and Trinity Church in New York, where they worshiped and are buried. In the supplemental material at the end of My Dear Hamilton, Kamoie states, “That graveyard is where our original idea for a plucky historical heroine turned into something darker and deeper. Where we began to hope our words could be another sort of monument for Eliza.”

The little that historians have written about Eliza has been deduced from the men around her. Dray’s and Kamoie’s extensive research gave them the context to understand what Eliza would possibly have said or done in certain circumstances and to build a narrative to portray her personality and emotional life, which makes the novel more engaging and believable. They address this in their “Notes from the Authors” at the end of the book. “Thankfully, fiction can go where historians fear to tread. And as novelists we were honored to look at the historical pieces of the puzzle and imagine the rich inner life that the historical fragments leave unspoken. We attempted to craft plausible answers to questions about Eliza’s reaction to her husband’s adultery. How she balanced her deep religious faith with disillusionment and worldly practicality. And how she might’ve come to terms with both the man — and the country — that she sacrificed for and which sometimes disappointed her.” They go on to say: “As for her personality, her contemporaries describe her as impulsive and vivacious.”

Dray and Kamoie have written a book that stands as a real tribute to Eliza, one of America’s founding women. Their immersive research has rewarded the reader with a truly immersive read. Right now, they are each working on individually authored novels and will, hopefully, one day join together for another collaboration.

REFERENCES:

1. Founders Online (https://founders.archives.gov/) has digitized and transcribed tens of thousands of letters to and from the Founding Fathers of the United States.

About the contributor: Janice Ottersberg is a reviewer for Historical Novels Review and a devoted fan of historical fiction.