The Truth About Benjamin Franklin

Carol Byrd is a college professor of linguistics and feminist criticism, with a reputation in academia as an original feminist. She’s married to John Byrd, also a professor at a midwestern university. Hired by a publishing company to write on the sexist attitudes of the founding fathers, Carol chooses Benjamin Franklin as her subject and begins her research. One night she has a dream in which Franklin appears and explains what kind of book he’d like her to write about him. Certain aspects of his life, he tells her, such as his over-fondness for women, and his lack of spirituality, have been misinterpreted by history and he’d like these corrected. He begins appearing in her dreams regularly as well as in her waking life, guiding her writing and discussing his life and his philosophy with her. At first, she dismisses these experiences as imagination, but begins to be drawn into his story and finds herself taking his side, seeing history his way. Soon she is unable to deny the reality of his presence, and that there are planes of existence outside the physical world. This awareness changes her, expands her world, her marriage, her writing and her outlook on life.