As a girl growing up in Kentucky, she lived a sheltered, privileged
life filled with picnics and plantation balls. Vivacious,
impulsive, and intoxicated by politics, she is a Todd of Lexington,
an aristocratic family whose ancestors defeated the British. But no
one knows her secret fears and anxieties. Although she is courted
by the most eligible suitors in the land, including future senator
Stephen Douglas, it is a gangly lawyer from Illinois who
captures her heart. After a stormy courtship and a broken
engagement, Abraham Lincoln will marry twenty-four-year-old Mary
Todd and give her a ring inscribed with the words "Love Is
Eternal."
But their happiness won't last nearly so long. Their first child
will be born under the gathering clouds of a civil war, and three
more follow. As Lincoln's star rises, the pleasure-loving Mary
learns, often the hard way, the rules of being a politician's wife.
But by the time the fiery storm of war passes, tragedy will have
claimed two sons, scandal will shadow her days as First Lady, and
an assassin's bullet will take Lincoln himself, leaving Mary alone
and all but forgotten by the nation that owed her husband its
survival.
Yet it is in the years to come that Mary Todd Lincoln will truly
come into her own. In public, she will fight to preserve Lincoln's
memory even as she battles a bitterly contested insanity trial. In
private, she will struggle with depression and addiction as she
endures the betrayals-both real and imagined-of family and friends.
With a gifted novelist's imagination and a historian's eye for
detail, Barbara Hambly tells a story of astonishing scope, richly
peopled with real-life characters and their fictionalcounterparts,
a tour-de-force tale of power, politics, and the role of women in
nineteenth- century America. The result is a Mary Todd Lincoln few
have seen and none will forget-the fascinating, controversial woman
of whom her husband could say: "My wife is as handsome as when she
was a girl and I fell in love with her; and what is more, I have
never fallen out"-Mary Todd, the woman who loved Abraham Lincoln.
"From the Hardcover edition.
General
Imprint: |
Random House USA Inc
|
Country of origin: |
India |
Release date: |
December 2005 |
First published: |
December 2005 |
Authors: |
Barbara Hambly
|
Dimensions: |
236 x 157 x 33mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
624 |
Edition: |
Bantam trade pbk. ed |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-553-38193-1 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
Genre fiction >
Historical fiction
Promotions
|
LSN: |
0-553-38193-8 |
Barcode: |
9780553381931 |
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