Mary Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley in the Civil War White House

Elizabeth Keckley purchased freedom for herself and her son and became a highly successful Washington dressmaker. Her clients included elite political families, and she entered Mary Lincoln’s confidence after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration.

Keckley made gowns, assisted Mary through family bereavements and helped organise relief for formerly enslaved people. Their friendship was unequal and later fractured after Keckley published Behind the Scenes, which she intended partly as a defence of Mary but which the former first lady regarded as betrayal.

An Unlikely Friendship uses alternating perspectives to imagine the women’s separate childhoods and the experiences that brought them together. The novel presents their bond as real but constrained by slavery’s legacy, public judgement and profound differences in power.