Lees of Menokin (ePub)

The Lees of Menokin is a biographical novel about the life and marriage of Virginia planter and statesman Francis Lightfoot Lee, a dedicated patriot and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Francis Lee married Rebecca Tayloe a few years before the American Revolution began. Frank has known Becky Tayloe since she was an infant, yet when he happens upon her on an idyllic spring day in Williamsburg in 1768, he is amazed and enchanted by the beautiful young woman she has become. The encounter proves a fateful one for the charming ladies' man and consummate bachelor-although Becky is half his age, the pair fall quickly and deeply in love. On a sprawling thousand-acre estate they build the house they name Menokin, all a wedding gift from her father. Yet even as the Lees settle into married life, the suffocating grip of England tightens on the American colonies. Frank's position in the House of Burgesses earns him a seat in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, where he spends four long years and joins fifty-five other patriots in signing the Declaration of Independence. War soon erupts in the colonies, sweeping the Lees along in its turbulent wake. As they move from Virginia to Pennsylvania to Maryland and back again, Frank and Becky find their marriage tested by the demands of political life and the chaos of war. Yet through it all, they hold fast to their abiding love for one another, true partners facing the struggles of life in a fledgling nation. Colonial Virginia and the American struggle for independence come alive in this exciting biographical novel.