Lori Anne Goldstein Reimagines History in 'Love, Theodosia'

“For anyone who has been intrigued by this time period and these people from the Hamilton musical or from other books about that time period, biographies of Hamilton or Adams, this is a different take; a look from a feminine perspective and really a lot of fun.”

Love, Theodosia, Goldstein’s historical fiction debut, tells of the romance between Theodosia, the daughter of Aaron Burr and Phillip, the son of Alexander Hamilton. The idea for the story came to Goldstein while watching the musical, Hamilton, on Broadway. One of the songs, Dear Theodosia, is about the first-born children of notorious rivals, Burr and Hamilton, and became the inspiration for this love story. “The idea of a Romeo and Juliet story just popped into my head. You have these two rivals, you know, families, and they each had a child, a girl and a boy born less than a year, about a year apart and the idea of what would happen if those two developed, had a romance and it put their families at odds.”

In the course of the interview, Goldstein talked about what it was like to shift from writing young adult novels to adult historical fiction, the controversial presidential election of 1800, the lost letters between Aaron Burr and Theodosia, and the differences between politics then and now.