Spoiler-free summary: A biography of George Washington, from his early life all the way through to his death. A dry, slow slog that is weirdly obsessed with Washington’s lifelong love of Sally Fairfax.
Discussion: The title of this one tripped alarms for me off the bat – the idea that George Washington was destined to be president made me think this would be a hagiography of the guy. It’s not quite that far over the top, luckily, but it also doesn’t get all that critical. George Washington was an important person and is deservedly respected for his time as president, but a modern biography would likely address his status as a slaveholder in more depth. This book does make mention of the slaves he owns here and there, but unforgivably, Eaton writes their dialog in full dialect – for example, “Lawsee, Gen’l, you’ll soon be ridin’ to houn’s agin same as befo’!” No other characters get this treatment, even though there would be a range of accents going on.
It seems like this book was well-researched – there’s a references section at the end – but there also must have been liberties taken to make this more of a story than a dry recitation of fact. There are conversations here that wouldn’t have been recorded, internal thoughts that must have been extrapolated. As I mentioned in the summary, there is a lot about Sally Fairfax. I haven’t read any other biography about Washington, but googling around, I think this must have been played up by the author in a speculative way, and I’m not fully sure why. I guess it’s romantic, in a way, but it undermines the relationship between him and Martha, making it a full-on settling. Again, maybe it was?
I’ve discussed in earlier reviews the types of books that have won Honors that you just don’t see anymore, and this might be another genre for the list, the in-depth biography. I feel like it’d take a very particular kind of nerdy kid to be into this. I’m not that far off of this type of nerdy adult – I’ve read Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson series so far and loved it – and while I think this book had some stretches that were interesting, it mostly felt like a chore to get through. I couldn’t find an e-book version of this, but doing estimating based on a few pages, I think the word count of this is probably a bit over 100,000 – maybe not quite as long as The Story of Mankind, but in the ballpark, and longer than all of the other winners. I cannot imagine trying to convince a 12 year old to read this.
Next up is Somewhere in the Darkness by Walter Dean Myers, which is on my list of “I think I might have read this as a kid?” books. We’ll see!
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