Before she became a published writer, Barbara Chase-Riboud was well established as a sculptor of international reputation. Her work in cast and polished bronze, often combined with lengths of wool, silk, and other textiles, is found in a number of major museums and in many important private collections. In the 1960s, she and her husband, French photographer Marc Riboud, traveled to the People's Republic of China. One of the first American women to visit postrevolutionary Peking, she explored the nature of her experiences there, her encounters with the Chinese and their complex history and culture, in a collection of poems, From Memphis & Peking, published in 1974. Five years later, she published Sally Hemings, a prizewinning historical novel based on the story, long given currency in black American folk culture, that Thomas Jefferson, following his wife's death, had taken her slave half sister as his mistress and was the father...