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Norm is completing a work of historical fiction with the working title of Sally: Mistress at Monticello, or, possibly, The Alcove Bed. The work describes the sometimes disputed but widely confirmed relationship between the widower Thomas Jefferson and his beautiful, young sister-in-law, Sally Hemings.

Each chapter is marked with an actual date and place. Jefferson left records of his whereabouts and associations for nearly every day of his adult life--a life of achievement accompanied by turbulence and loss. All that remained for Norm, author of the nonfiction Diagnosing Jefferson, was to write presumed dialogues and reasoned narratives from the points of view of his two principals.

Sally is elevated from others' portrayals as brooding slave/victim to strong, resourceful, intelligent person, mother of eight children by Thomas, four of whom survived and went free. She is his helpmate and Monticello housemistress, often in conflict with his daughter (and her niece) Martha Randolph.

Norm's rationale is that Jefferson would not have spent 38 years faithfully, in a relationship he defended uncompromisingly and quietly, with any other kind of woman.

 

Ask Norm

 

Thanks to the influence of Norm’s show biz father, Cy, his talks are as entertaining as they are informative. If you want to hear anecdotes that may amaze you or tickle your funny bone, then ask Norm— 

• How did he become an audience of one to Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s organ playing?

• How did he survive a public confrontation with heavyweight boxer “Two-Ton” Tony Galento?

• What can we learn from a favorite true story about a forgetful bureaucrat?

• How did he become the first emergency services person in the U.S. to introduce bilingual hurricane warnings to Gulf Coast Louisiana?

• How, as a safety educator, did he con a junkyard operator into buying protective steel-toed shoes for all his workers?

• How did he happen to lead a Washington D.C. restaurant sit-in a decade before the one history credits to Wichita, Kansas?

• What floral scent does he recall when listening to songs of Billie Holliday?

• What roundabout tie does he claim to the New York-based radio breaks, “Do you know where your children are?” and “Have you hugged your child today?”

• What is his untold “link” to Kansas’s premier golf course—Iron Horse?

• And for stories about his five children when they were little—you don’t even have to ask.