This is an amazing book on so many different levels, and one of them is in qualifying as a successful microhistory. As a microhistory, the book explores the personal and emotional stories of several characters and uses those stories to examine important historical trends in post Revolutionary America, including the crumbling class and economic structure of Virginia's landed gentry, the powers and perils of patriarchy, the reliance and independence of gender, and in general, the social and cultural transition from a colony to a state in a republic. Floating above all of that is a treatise on reputation, personal honor and gossip in early America. Could this author have possibly done anything more to build a minor personal matter into a grand coverage of this era?
I can't let an almost perfect book escape without a small criticism. Dr. Kierner's treatment of the slaves at Glentivar strikes me as a stretch of her material in order to include slavery (an issue certainly central to Virginia at the time) when slavery was not a central issue to her facts. There is no doubt that slaves had agency during this period in a number of ways, but I don't buy her premise that the slaves of Glentivar 'propagated rumors' about the miscarriage or infanticide in order to attack their owner, Randolph Harrison, and "cast doubt upon his ability to govern and protect his household" (p. 68). With all the evidence of societal infighting among the whites in this book, I simply have difficulty making Glentivar's slaves the power behind the spreading of rumors when in my opinion they were most likely only a simple conduit of a small amount of scandalous information.
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