Words and phrases lifted directly from letters of the time are sprinkled liberally throughout Eliza's memories, but her voice falls shy of modern speech while avoiding any of the linguistic flourishes found in 18th Century writing. Dray and Kamoie find the perfect medium to make her accessible to a modern reader. She was not shaped by her husband-she was his compliment before they ever met. The opening chapters solidify her early assertion: 'I was someone before I met Alexander Hamilton.' Fire and moderation combine to make Eliza a formidable woman. All of these experiences lay the foundation for a wife and mother equipped for battle: if not with muskets and cannons, then with words.and silence. She had a frontier childhood, running wild over the countryside she was given a name by the Iroquois in their language she tended to wounded soldiers during the war.

My Dear Hamilton opens several years before Eliza meets her future husband, introducing a quiet but intrepid young woman. Dray and Kamoie seek to remedy that through their meticulously researched historical fiction novel, rediscovering a voice lost to history. A Founding Mother in her own right, she is often treated as a supplement or footnote in Alexander Hamilton's story, which only recently returned to prominence in our nation's consciousness. Yet even those familiar with her husband's biography, like myself, may not know the full extent of her achievements. Questioning her tireless devotion to the man and country that have broken her heart, she’s left with one last battle-to understand the flawed man she married and imperfect union he could never have created without her…Įlizabeth Schuyler Hamilton was an accomplished woman, whether you measure by the standards of her time or ours. But long-buried secrets threaten everything Eliza believes about her marriage and her own legacy. When a duel destroys Eliza’s hard-won peace, the grieving widow fights her husband’s enemies to preserve Alexander’s legacy. The last surviving light of the Revolution… From glittering inaugural balls to bloody street riots, the Hamiltons are at the center of it all-including the political treachery of America’s first sex scandal, which forces Eliza to struggle through heartbreak and betrayal to find forgiveness. They fall in love, despite Hamilton’s bastard birth and the uncertainties of war.īut the union they create-in their marriage and the new nation-is far from perfect.

And when she meets Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s penniless but passionate aide-de-camp, she’s captivated by the young officer’s charisma and brilliance. Coming of age on the perilous frontier of revolutionary New York, Elizabeth Schuyler champions the fight for independence.

My dear hamilton by stephanie dray