John and Abigail Adams - First Family and Patriotic Sleuth

While I was rereading the excellent bio of John Adams by David McCullough, I was overcome with the urge to reread, in tandem, the first book in Barbara Hamilton's wonderful trilogy in which wife Abigail solves heinous mysteries. I finished The Ninth Wife on the same day that I finished the John Adams bio--what a treat.

Ten Things I Love About John Adams

No question, John Adams is my favorite Founding Father. Rereading this bio, simply cemented his place in my esteem and affection.

Here are the top 11 things that I love about Adams. I simply couldn't stop at 10.

1. He was passionate about what he believed in, and he believed in the right of self-government.
2. He was loving and warm, even hot-tempered, but with the capacity to forgive and forget and acknowledge when he was wrong.
3. He was very smart and articulate and logical but also compassionate and considerate.
4. He was self-aware--he acknowledged his pride and ambition and wrestled with whether these were faults or attributes.
5. He admired, respected, and honored his father as the best of men. He knew a great many "great" men--kings, lords, politicians, statesmen, philosophers, generals, etc., but his father was the best of them all in his eyes.
6. He took every job he was given seriously and did his best and never shirked his duty, despite hardships to his physical health, his family, and his finances.
7. He loved Abigail and respected her and listened to her. She was his partner, and he was her "dearest friend."
8. Despite the lies told about him when he was in office, he never stooped to spreading slander about his political opponents.
9. He never owned any slaves and championed abolition.
10. He valued his friends and was the first to extend an olive branch when the friendship fell on hard times.
11. He had a great sense of humor, loved life, and found joy in all things great and small.

My favorite part of the book was about John's and Abigail's time in Europe--Paris before the French Revolution, the Hague, and London after the American Revolution. Crossing the Atlantic was perilous, but John made the trip many times, the first in the winter. How's that for courage!

I've had First Family, by Joseph J. Ellis on my TBR shelf for way too long, so maybe I will dive into that next. And, I would also love to read more about John Quincy Adams, John and Abigail's eldest son, and Charles Francis Adams, one of their many grandsons.

The Ninth Daughter

As a companion read to the JA bio, I decided to reread The Ninth Daughter, by Barbara Hamilton. October is a perfect month for mysteries, and this is a cracking good one and I like companion novels to dress up my nonfiction reading.

The Ninth Daughter takes place in 1773 in Boston--a young woman that the Adams have befriended is missing and a socialite is found murdered in her home. In the course of searching for her friend, Abigail solves the whodunit, showing pluck, intelligence, determination, and courage as she deals with religious fanatics (remember, the Salem witch hysteria was only 80 years earlier), misogynists, Redcoats (some of them downright decent), Patriots (including good friend Paul Revere and John's cousin Sam, leader of the Sons of Liberty), gossips, skinflints, and nosy neighbors. 

With the Boston Tea Party looming in the background, I loved reading about life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Abigail and John have four young children and just one servant to help with the massive work it takes to keep the family fed, clothed, clean, safe, and educated. The details of everyday life really brought the story to life for me. Yes, I love a good mystery, but the atmosphere, the cold and damp of the late fall in Boston, made this one especially good.

I have a lot on my reading plate at the moment, but I am considering rereading the second book in the series, A Marked Man...maybe while I read First Family.

Oh, and rewatching the excellent miniseries with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney is a no brainer!

John Adams by David McCullough

It seems like I've spent most of 2011 reading this book. Checking back on Good Reads, I find that I added it to my reading stack in April, shortly after I finished the wonderful bio of George Washington by Ron Chernow. I liked McCullough's bio of Adams even more. Superbly written, endlessly interesting, I savored the book and am glad that I read it slowly, getting to know Adams and his remarkable wife, Abigail, over the stretch of many months.

I learned so much about the Adams family, the Revolution and the formation of the United States, the growth of the two-party system, international relations (especially the vacillating relationships with both France and Britain), and life in the late 18th century.

I used to have an extreme bias towards Jefferson, and then I read bios of Hamilton and Washington, which cast him in a much different and less flattering light. I really loved reading about Adams's very complicated relationship with Jefferson, from their days as Revolutionaries to their friendship as fellow ambassadors just after the Revolution to their falling out and political rivalry to their final correspondence in old age. The wonderful thing about reading is having your views shift and mature and develop, and this book altered again my view of Jefferson.

Finally, I absolutely adore Abigail Adams. I am so looking forward First Family: Abigail and John Adams. She was everything admirable--smart, loyal, charming, witty, strong, dependable, loving, and sincere. It is a credit to John Adams that he found and married and made happy such a wife.

Now it's time to rewatch the marvelous HBO mini-series starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. It is based on McCullough's bio and I loved it so much a few years ago when I watched it. I also really want to visit the Adams National Historical Park--I just discovered it doesn't open for the season until April 19, which is unfortunate because I was hoping to go to the Boston area for Spring Break this year.