Thomas Jefferson I wondered if my mother would have appreciated the irony of my white knight in shining armor having been dipped in the African sun. But my mother was not here. Thenia was the only member of my family at my wedding. She stood, her heart-shaped face with its noble forehead and oversized eyes, like a package of brown earth from Monticello. She was the stand-in for father and mother, sisters, brothers, aunts, and cousins. She was all I had. My link to the truth. As I walked down the aisle, dressed in white, on the arm of Petit, I thought that life, which until that moment had caused me so much uncertainty, was nothing more than a long series of contracts, ceremonies, insurance policies, promissory notes, and preordained words with which humanity entertained itself in order not to commit murder. Everyone had the same terror of the unknown. The church, whose colored-glass windows looked out onto the harbor of the largest city in America, closed around me. Beyond was the vast expanse of the Atlantic, and beyond that the old world, where everything had been invented, including slavery.
What do You think about The President's Daughter (1994)?
