THE STORY

It’s 1790 in the City of New York, and the First Congress of the United States, under its new Constitution, is in session. For Representative James Madison of Virginia, the frail, arrogant and diminutive genius who is its de facto author, this should be a moment of triumph. But Madison has a wealth of worries to contend with. The Constitution has yet to be ratified by all the states, there is a Bill of Rights he must compose, the newly minted country is woefully deep in war debt, and worst of all is his declining health. Madison, who had mild seizures throughout his life, now struggles with the most crippling onset imaginable. More troubling, they seem to portend his new country being torn apart over the one issue he had thought he had put to rest.

When Madison inserted a clause into the Constitution that barred Congress from regulating the slave trade for the next twenty years, he thought the contentious problem neatly tucked away until 1808. In fact, he promised his friend and mentor President Washington that it was “settled law” after Washington tasked him with keeping the shameful “property issue” at bay. But now, Washington’s spies whisper of plots laid in shadows, and Madison is worried. The pressure Washington exerts is immense.

It seems a godsend when Madison’s wily, runaway slave William “Billey” Gardiner arrives out of nowhere. Billey, now a free man, knows how to care for Madison and his disabling condition. Madison cleverly strikes a deal with Billey: if Billey tends him, Madison will sell Billey one of his slaves – Billey’s childhood sweetheart, Henrietta. But soon Billey’s presence awakens Madison’s moral hypocrisy, causing his seizures to spiral further toward madness as they begin to reveal a dark Madison family secret.

When a society of Quakers presents Congress with a petition to abolish the slave trade entirely, Madison’s fears compound. When the petition is endorsed by a national hero, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, threats of civil war erupt, and the new country finds itself on a precipice. To save his work, his Constitution and his career, Madison must break this Gordian knot that has him in a stranglehold.

The national debt, slavery, personal greed, morality and the future of the country all become pawns in Madison’s ultimate game of chess. To make his moves, Madison must manipulate an overtly ambitious Alexander Hamilton, an enigmatic but brilliant Thomas Jefferson, a tenacious President Washington and a shrewd former slave bent on ensuring freedom for his children. As these opposing forces collide, Madison’s seizures slowly reveal his obscured family history of deception, murder and racism laid bare. Ultimately, he will sacrifice his incorruptible character in a desperate political gambit.

Madison proves himself a master strategist and seems to have the game well in-hand until he is forced to confront an awful truth: he is not the one pulling the strings…

Closely based on painstaking research, Blow Out the Light is a tale of morality, political intrigue, and desperation. It confronts racial injustice, political self-dealing, blind ambition, and willful ignorance as it plumbs the very roots of our current political precipice and challenges our perceptions of America’s founding fathers.