The University of Michigan Alumni Magazine reviewed (and recommended) Book of Ages in its last issue and, having had great success with past recommendations (Edmund Love, Rich Boy, and The Blood of Free Men all come to mind), I borrowed it from the library. Unfortunately, I wasn't a fan.
The truth of the matter is that Jill Lepore's Book of Ages proves her lament: histories of great men, novels of little women. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Book of Ages is the biography of Benjamin Franklin's youngest, and longest living, sister, Jane. She was the only sibling to outlive him, the one to whom he was closest, and the one with whom he shared a lifelong correspondence. This biography is constructed through the letters the Franklins exchanged, not all of which, of course, survive. Lepore fills in a bit of conjecture where necessary: did Jane, for example, read Benjamin's autobiography, published posthumously? If so, here is what she would have found... And so on. It is not a bad book, but, fair of me or no, Jane Franklin's life does not require 316 pages, and I became rather impatient.
Book of Ages essentially chronicles the lives of those to whom Franklin was related: siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews, all of whom, with few exceptions, led poor, if not hard scrabble lives in colonial America. It does not help the reader that they seem to have used only about 10 surnames among 100 or so people (Jane, Benjamin, Josiah, Sarah, and Jenny being the most common), and so I was hopelessly lost remembering who was who, who begat who, and who, frankly, really mattered.
Unfortunately for Lepore ordinary lives do not make for great reading when relayed in ordinary ways. The reader only has so much interest in the making of soap or the laundering of smalls. For a more vibrant read on Revolutionary times, I recommend, alas, a novel: The Schoolmaster's Daughter.
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