Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Keckley was a formerly enslaved dressmaker, author and activist who became Mary Lincoln’s modiste and confidante in the White House. The surviving record places this person within the historical events represented in Ann Rinaldi’s fiction.

Historical fiction may reconstruct private conversations, motives and emotional responses that sources do not preserve. The relationship is included because the person is portrayed under a real historical identity, while invented details should not be treated as documentary biography.