Q&A with Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

  

Stephanie Dray, photo by Kelsey Edwards

 

Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie are the authors of the new novel A Founding Mother: A Novel of Abigail Adams. Their other books include America's First Daughter.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write a novel based on the life of Abigail Adams (1744-1818)?  

 

A: We’ve written other books about Founding Mothers: America’s First Daughter about Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph and My Dear Hamilton about Eliza Schuyler Hamilton.  

 

Originally, we thought we’d stay away from Abigail because we’re huge fans of the HBO John Adams miniseries, and weren’t sure what we could contribute to Laura Linney’s brilliant portrayal of Abigail.  

 

But the more we thought about it, we realized that the miniseries really only featured a small part of Abigail’s story, especially because John’s wartime and nation-building commitments separated them for years at a time.  

 

Once we began to dive more into her story, we realized that her journey from mother to ardent patriot to First Lady to matriarch of a political dynasty was one that needed to be told–with her front and center.

Laura Kamoie, photo by Renee Hollingshead

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?  

 

A: We started where we always do–with biographies and with the primary documents and letters available to everyone on the National Archives founders.archives.gov website. It’s an amazing source of not only digitized but transcribed sources and invaluable for researching the founding era.  

 

Reading those letters, it was surprising and delightful to see how tart and funny Abigail really could be. And how direct she was, especially compared to the other women we’ve written about. Abigail was not one to suffer fools. And she had a Yankee no-nonsense way about her that was delightful.  

 

So one of the most fun things about the research this time is that we reached out to an expert Abigail Adams re-enactor, Carol Cohen, who gave us many juicy details about Abigail… including the part about her making bullets!  

 

Another thing that surprised us was that Abigail was often more radical than her husband. Her opinions were less measured than his. She was often two steps ahead of getting to the place he might eventually land.  

 

Readers may also be shocked to find that she was an entrepreneur and that John's public career was enabled not just by her sacrifices on the farm, but also by her business acumen as an investor.  

Q: The writer Kate Quinn said of the book, “The research shines, the prose gleams, the characterization is a delight, and the themes are timelier than ever--on the eve of our nation's 250th anniversary, I can think of no book more necessary than A Founding Mother.” What do you think of that description?  

 

A: Have we mentioned how much we love Kate Quinn? In all seriousness, this praise is such an amazing compliment coming from someone we admire so much. And we can’t help but agree that Abigail is the perfect protagonist and A Founding Mother is the perfect story for this moment!  

 

Q: What do you think Abigail Adams would make of today’s politics?  

 

A: Interestingly, Abigail might have seen more in the intensity of today’s partisanship that was familiar to her than one might think, but she likely also would’ve wanted us to be much better stewards of the democratic republic she helped found.  

 

Q: What are you working on now?  

 

A: We have so many irons in the fire! Together, we are working on our next Founding Mother novel–though we can’t share who the protagonist is just yet! Individually, we’re both working on solo novels set in the World War II era.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?  

 

A: The book comes out on May 5, 2026, in paperback, ebook, and audiobook! We can’t wait for everyone to read it! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie.