Clotel: The Presidents Daughter is a fictional story that plays to the well-known rumor starting in the 19th century that Thomas Jefferson had fathered several children with Sally Hemings, a woman whom he had enslaved. The children were described to be nearly white in physical description. Sally Hemings was believed to be the half-sister of Jefferson wife. Set in the early19th century the novel considers slavery's catastrophic effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of mixed race people, and the degraded and immoral condition of the relationship between the enslaver and the enslaved in the United States of America. Clotel is considered a tragic mulatto story featuring an enslaved mixed-race woman named Currer and her daughters Althesa and Clotel, fathered by Thomas Jefferson. They women face much hardship while taking heroic measures to preserve their family.