The Flight of Virtue

In the spring of 1794, the French Revolution is building to its bloody climax, but half a world away, two of America's Founding Fathers are plotting to change the fates of some of its intended victims. Thomas Jefferson is hatching a plan with his sometimes-rival Aaron Burr to rescue his old friend, the marquis de Lafayette, captured by the Holy Roman emperor, and the marquis' family, prisoners of France's Reign of Terror. Neither can make this perilous journey themselves, so instead they come up with the idea to send their most trusted confederates in their place. For Burr, this is his adolescent daughter, Theodosia—a prodigy who is both his chief confidante and his greatest creation. For Jefferson, this is twenty-year-old Sally Hemings—the young woman who is both his slave and his dead wife's half-sister. Posing as Theo's governess, Sally must race against the infernal intentions of both the New World and the Old to save the Lafayettes, but she'll soon find that her precocious charge has no intention of staying out of the action. Level-headed Sally may not want a partner, and Theo might be too smart for her own good, but neither will end up having much choice in the matter. For both American girls are about to be swept up in the chaos unleashed on France by the bloodthirsty National Convention and its dreaded Committee of Public Safety, and they'll need to work together to save the Lafayettes' heads—as well as their own. But as these reluctant allies are aided and thwarted by a rogues' gallery of revolutionaries, pirates, and radical feminists, will their separate secrets tear them apart before the Revolution does?