More on Strom Thurmond's daughter in Newsday this week. It's unfair to say the whole thing is novelistic, because these were real people, including one woman who grew up dirt-poor while the man who exercises droit de seigneur on her mother was at one point third in line for the presidency, but the fascination of it, especially the glimpses of character we get from the details: the business-like little letters from her asking for money, the weird thank-you for her Father's Day card (sent with what sense of irony?), the open secrecy of the meetings--he would show up at her college in a limo, for God's sake.