Before George met Martha and even after their betrothal, he was madly if discreetly in love with his neighbor's wife, and this more-than-likelihood (see Douglas Southall Freeman) provides half the impetus for a romantic fictionalization of the first President's life; the other half arises from the alienation between George and Martha following her daughter Patsy's death, and their eventual reconciliation. The narrative is tortuously structured, a matter of flashbacks from a present in which Washington is leaving office to episodes of his earlier life, setting up two interlocking chronologies. As artificial as this is, as suspect as is the whole undertaking, there's no denying what it does to unbend old George, or the fact that it reads quite entertainingly.