Review by New York Times Review
ANYONE who has ever imagined living life totally on his or her own terms would do well to study the lessons of "Passion and Principle," Sally Denton's lively revisionist accounting of John and Jessie Frémont. The couple, she posits, were the embodiment of American history during its most vital 19th-century moments, including the opening of the West, the creation of the Republican Party, the Civil War and beyond. The Frémonts were the John and Abigail Adams of their time, or the Charles and Anne Lindbergh, or even the Franklin and Eleanor, John and Jackie, Bill and Hillary - a couple who sought, consciously and unconsciously, to move society forward and, in varying degrees, were both rewarded and pilloried for doing so. It is Demon's belief that owing largely to their progressive views - particularly their virulent opposition to slavery, paired with Jessie's feminism - the Frémonts suffered more than most; they were multimillionaires and came just shy of being the president and first lady at the height of their powers, but wound up historical punch lines, relegated to ever smaller and meaner living arrangements in the twilight of their lives. In this recounting, Denton aims to set the record straight, to explore why historians spent more than a century "discrediting his accomplishments and belittling her contribution to society." Denton, whose books include "American Massacre" and "Faith and Betrayal," is a wonderful writer, and was fortunate to have had in the Frémonts two willing helpmates: they provided her not only with vivid prose of their own - Jessie in particular was a prolific correspondent and memoirist - but with enough drama for a multipart series on Lifetime Television. When they met in 1840, Jessie was "a raven-haired beauty" of 16 and the consummate daddy's girl - the daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, then the most powerful senator in America, an early and passionate proponent of Manifest Destiny. Jessie grew up cultured and sophisticated, well educated - as a child she browsed through Thomas Jefferson's 6,000-volume collection of books in the Library of Congress - and, because of her looks, was much sought after as a bride by the likes of President Martin Van Buren. Thanks to countless hours at her father's knee, she was also "as trained and astute a politician as any young man her age." When Lt. John Charles Frémont's lips brushed her hand on that fateful day, Denton tells us, he was then a dubiously born 27-year-old hunk with "dusky" blue eyes, a "tanned face and flashing white teeth," just back from exploring the land between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Frémont, too, was well educated - though, problematically, not at West Point - and well mentored by some of the great explorers of the day, an intensely private, disciplined, if hardheaded, soul. What happened next should have surprised no one, but in fact set in motion a fantastic series of melodramas that would have repercussions for everyone and everything from Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln to, yes, America itself. Power couple: John C. Frémont claimed the West for America as Jessie navigated Washington. Denton provides snapshots of 19th-century America when the two elope - Frémont wasn't at all what Benton had in mind for his impeccably bred daughter - and then endure a series of separations and reunions, as John nearly perishes on his way to claiming California for the United States and fights to preserve the Union and abolish slavery, trying his best to accommodate the needs and ambitions of various presidents along the way. Jessie, meanwhile, stays behind in Washington, charming the same and shaping her husband's reputation in the process. But John had a habit of doing what he thought best - he was in no way a go-along-to-get-along guy - and Jessie had a habit of doing likewise, especially where her husband's future was concerned. This was Jessie's one option: as bright and ambitious as she was, the only way she could realize her dreams in her time was to make her husband's her own, and operate on his behalf. Initially, all went reasonably well. The triangle of the Frémonts and Benton (Jessie's mother, Elizabeth, was a depressive who took to her bed early) was, according to Denton, "devoted to a single destiny: to explore the rich, uncharted territory of America and to establish trade routes stretching to the Sea of Cortes and beyond." Once Benton got over his fury at the elopement, he generously used his power to protect Frémont, who, sometimes to his credit and sometimes not, had a tin ear for politics. Early on, he conspired with Benton to get around President John Tyler, not just to explore the West but to claim it, at one point carrying a large howitzer on a mission that was supposed to be purely scientific. Jessie subsequently took it on herself to clear up any misunderstandings by writing to her husband's superior officer, and she also failed to pass on an order recalling Frémont to Washington. "Once the letter was sent, she began to consider the ramifications," Denton writes. "She had acted solely in furtherance of the expedition, and only now did she realize that she had actually defied the U.S. government." Later, in 1847, Jessie would call on President James K. Polk to plead her husband's case for what she perceived as an unfair court-martial. And so it went, for many years, until the beginnings of the Civil War caused an irreparable breach between the Frémonts and Benton. By then John, known as the Pathfinder, was a player in his own right, but he never established a power base in Washington. When the Frémonts remained adamant in their opposition to slavery while Benton remained determined to preserve the Union at all costs, the couple lost their most influential protector and fell victim to one of many smear campaigns. In many ways, the couple's real love affair was with Washington's elite, which elevated, betrayed and exploited them as needed, making Frémont the Republican nominee for president in 1856 and then exiling him cruelly after he issued the first emancipation proclamation in the country, as commander of troops in Missouri, five years later. Denton's portrayal of Jessie's overconfident and misguided meeting with a decidedly cool and impatient President Lincoln on her husband's behalf is a high point of the book. ("You are quite a female politician," Lincoln told her, sneering.) "Passion and Principle" really belongs to Jessie - she was the better writer and had profoundly superior social skills - and Denton handily makes the case for elevating the couple's stature in the history books. But the Frémonts' self-righteousness, if played down by the author, serves as a cautionary and often humorous subtext. Like so many progressives, the Frémonts were mostly right, but couldn't help reminding everyone else of that fact, and, ultimately, it did them in. Even back then, nobody liked an "I told you so." The Frémonts were the John and Abigail Adams of their time, or the John and Jackie, or the Bill and Hillary. Mimi Swartz is an executive editor at Texas Monthly.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Lee mixes feminism and cultural awareness to create a sweeping story of first-generation Korean Americans finding their way between the old world and the new. Casey Han, her 22-year-old heroine, is having trouble turning her Princeton economics degree into a job. When her authoritarian father throws her out, she goes to her white boyfriend for solace only to find him with in bed with two sorority girls. Just as all looks lost, she meets a rich school acquaintance, Ella Shim, who offers her a place to stay and convinces her fiance to help Casey get a job. Casey's taste for expensive clothes keeps her in debt. Ella's shyness makes it easy for her husband to cheat on her. And Casey's father's coldness makes it hard for her mother to ignore kindness from another quarter. With very broad strokes and great detail, Lee paints colorful three-dimensional characters and outlines intergenerational and cultural struggles brilliantly. There is a little first-novel shyness on some issues but nothing the rest of the narrative doesn't make up for. --Elizabeth Dickie Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In her noteworthy debut, Lee filters through a lively postfeminist perspective a tale of first-generation immigrants stuck between stodgy parents and the hip new world. Lee's heroine, 22-year-old Casey Han, graduates magna cum laude in economics from Princeton with a taste for expensive clothes and an "enviable golf handicap," but hasn't found a "real" job yet, so her father kicks her out of his house. She heads to her white boyfriend's apartment only to find him in bed with two sorority girls. Next stop: running up her credit card at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. Casey's luck turns after a chance encounter with Ella Shim, an old acquaintance. Ella gives Casey a place to stay, while Ella's fiance gets Casey a "low pay, high abuse" job at his investment firm and Ella's cousin Unu becomes Casey's new romance. Lee creates a large canvas, following Casey as she shifts between jobs, careers, friends, mentors and lovers; Ella and Ted as they hit a blazingly rocky patch; and Casey's mother, Leah, as she belatedly discovers her own talents and desires. Though a first-novel timidity sometimes weakens the narrative, Lee's take on contemporary intergenerational cultural friction is wide-ranging, sympathetic and well worth reading. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
All Korean American Casey Han has to show for four impressive years at Princeton is a taste for the finer things in lifeAwhich is why she needs a job. Lee finally emerges after a decade spent racking up fellowships and awards. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Lee's debut is an epic-scale hybrid of the 19th-century novel (Middlemarch is oft-cited here) and Bonfire of the Vanities, but it lacks Eliot's literary polish and Wolfe's exuberance. Casey Han is a recent Princeton graduate, daughter of Korean-born owners of a Manhattan laundry who want their daughter both to cleave to tradition and fulfill the immigrants' ethic of success. But rebellious Casey has rubbed shoulders too long with the rich and privileged, and she finds herself back in New York City with "no job and a number of bad habits." One bad habit is her white Master-of-the-Universe boyfriend, whom she catches in flagrante with two LSU coeds; another is a fatal taste for the posh life, especially haute couture. In a terrifying first scene, Casey quarrels with her father, who strikes her hard across the face, then banishes her. The rest of the book shows Casey navigating her 20s: There are erotic entanglements, employment woes, the delicate negotiations of family life. Casey's an appealing heroine, but the book strays from her story: Lee adopts an omniscient voice that swoops into the consciousnesses of dozens of characters, often unpersuasively. Few minor characters rise above stereotype or expectation. Still, some elements--Casey's struggles with faith, her tempestuous relationship with her mentor/benefactress, a department-store mogul--are handled with a subtlety that bodes well for future books. Fitfully entertaining but not extraordinary. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
