The Emancipator’s Wife

by Barbara Hambly

First published 2005

Amazon

4.1(240)

Barbara Hambly’s novel follows Mary Todd Lincoln from her politically ambitious Kentucky girlhood and courtship by Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln through marriage, motherhood and life in the White House. Mary’s intelligence and interest in politics coexist with migraines, grief, volatile moods and the scrutiny directed at a president’s wife during civil war.

The later narrative centres on Lincoln’s assassination, Mary’s widowhood and the 1875 insanity proceedings initiated by her son Robert. Rather than treating her only as a tragic appendage to Abraham Lincoln, the novel presents a contentious woman struggling to preserve her family, her husband’s memory and control over her own life amid bereavement, medication, debt and public hostility.