ELEONORA AND JOSEPH

As the novel opens, aristocratic Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel pleads with the High Court of Naples to be beheaded instead of hanged like a criminal. One of the leading revolutionaries of her time, Eleonora contributed to the establishment of the Neapolitan Republic, based on the ideals of the French Revolution. Imprisoned in 1799 after the return of the Bourbon Monarchy, and while waiting to be sentenced, she writes a memoir. Here, she discusses not only her revolutionary enthusiasm, but also the adolescent lover who abandoned her, Joseph Correia da Serra. While visiting Monticello many years later, Joseph discovers Eleonoras manuscript in Thomas Jeffersons library. Now retired, Jefferson is committed to founding the University of Virginia and entices Correia with a position when the institution opens. As the two philosophes explore Eleonoras writing through the lens of their own lives, achievements, and follies, they share many intimate secrets. Told from Eleonora and Josephs alternating points of view, the interwoven first-person narratives follow the characters from the elegant salons of Naples to the halls of Monticello, from the streets of European capitals such as Lisbon, London, and Paris to the cultured new world of Philadelphia and the chic soirA(c)es in Washington.Eleonora and Joseph were both prominent figures of the Southern European Enlightenment. Together with Thomas Jefferson, they formed part of The Republic of Letters, a formidable network of thinkers who radically influenced the intellectual world in which they lived and which we still inhabit today.