I've spun wheels for three weeks ago because I was keeping hands mainly off the man who should have been the main character, Thomas Jefferson

 This was pure reversion to humble self-effacing Okie.

The book is about kinfolks and racial reckonings.

In the chapter I was working with the Sims family of the Sims Settlement and with William Cocke, the man who served in 4 state legislatures and married the Widow Sims.

I could not get the story told right. 

Jefferson was contradictory toward Indians, tolerant toward the Waffords but intolerant toward the Sims Settlers.

Then I realized this morning that I had to focus on the main character, TJ. After all, he is one of the kinfolks, cousin through more than half a dozen families including the Tuckers and McGehees and Branches and Carrs and Randolphs and even the Simses (though with the Sims connection you have to go back 2 generations, in England). As I say, no matter how squalid your living conditions may have been in the 19th and 20th centuries, if  you came over here to Virginia in the 1600s, you are kin to almost everyone from the old times.

And treating Jefferson as one of the cousins who needs to come to a racial reckoning is what solves my problem.

I was stewing, though, too respectful and not wanting to drag in a star. Now, having Cousin Colby officiate at the wedding of the Siamese Twins, that was not dragging in two stars. What was important was the damnation of Cousin Colby.