Mary: A Novel

A dramatic tale filled with passion and depression, poverty and ridicule, infidelity and redemption, this is the unforgettable story of Mary Todd Lincoln–one of history’s most enigmatic and misunderstood women.

Writing from Bellevue asylum–where the shrieks of the other inmates keep her awake at night–a famous widow finally shares the story of her life in her own words. From her tempestuous childhood in a slaveholding Southern family through the opium clouded years after her husband’s death, we are let into the inner, intimate world of this brave and fascinating woman. Intelligent and unconventional–and, some thought, mad–she held séances in the White House, ran her family into debt with compulsive shopping, negotiated with conniving politicians, and raised her young sons during the Civil War. She was also a political strategist, a comfort to wounded soldiers, a supporter of emancipation, the first to be called First Lady, and a wife and mother who survived the loss of three children and the assassination of her beloved husband.