Ann Rinaldi is the author who first got me interested in writing historical fiction. She does it so beautifully. “Wolf By the Ears” is, in my opinion, one of her finest novels, set in 1819 on Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia plantation, Monticello.
For years it has been speculated that Thomas Jefferson took his slave Sally Hemmings as his mistress and fathered children with her. Some historians feel that it was actually Jefferson’s brother who fathered those children, and we may never know for sure. This book is written from the viewpoint that it was Jefferson himself, and so for the purposes of discussing this novel, we’ll say that’s what happened.
Harriet is the daughter of Sally Hemmings and has lived at Monticello her whole life. No one has ever called her a slave and she is treated well. She knows that she’s lighter than the other slaves on the plantation, but that doesn’t seem important to her, until her brother tells her his belief that they are the children of Thomas Jefferson.
Now she has a choice to make. Should she leave the plantation, as her brother has done, go up North and pass herself off as a white woman? She could get away with it, if she wore nicer clothing and did her hair a little differently. But if she left, it would mean leaving behind her home, her mother, and possibly her father. She doesn’t know what she should do.
I had the chance to visit Monticello about twelve years ago and was thrilled to see the things that Ann described so well in the book. The stone corridors that ran under the building, the room above Jefferson’s where Sally did her sewing – it was all exactly as Ann described it. She is a masterful storyteller and I hope someday be able to write as well as she does.
(This book was published by Scholastic in 1991.)
