Judith Sayre asked Laura Kamoie:

How did you and Stephanie Dray meet each other and decide to collaborate? Just finished "My Dear Hamilton" and "America's First Daughter" for my Book Club and thoroughly enjoyed both books!!

Laura Kamoie Hi Judith - Stephanie and I were long-time friends and had met through a writers' group before we decided to collaborate. The idea for America's First Daughter came up over a dinner at a writing conference. I was telling Steph about the classes I was teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy where I was a professor in the history department. I taught a small senior seminar on Thomas Jefferson, and in telling Steph about what the midshipmen were doing, I learned how interested she was in the Revolutionary era. That conversation turned to how challenging it is to make an original contribution on a topic like Jefferson because seemingly every aspect of him has been researched--but we realized there was an exception to that. His daughters had not been well researched or covered at all, and that made us realize there was a pretty great untold story in his eldest daughter, Patsy, who was his life-long companion. We stayed up until 4 in the morning that night looking into Patsy and decided we would write a novel about her and do it together! That's how it all started! There are now more books out now about his daughters, both in fiction and non-fiction.

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