Janis Cooke Newman

While residing in Bellevue Place Sanitarium, Mary Todd Lincoln shares her life story, from her childhood in Kentucky in a slaveholding Southern family, to her marriage to Abraham Lincoln and beyond. A first novel. Reprint.

Mary

"Set in 1942 New York and Berlin, [this is a novel] about the life-giving powers of storytelling, and the heroism that can be inspired by love. In essence, it is two love stories. It is the story of a child who worships his parents, then loses his father to an accident and his mother to her resulting grief. And it is the story of a young man who stumbles into the romance of his life, then watches her decline, forever changing the arc of his future. Each is propelled by the belief that if he acts heroically enough, it will restore some part of what--or whom --he has lost"--Provided by publisher.

A Master Plan for Rescue

Mary Todd Lincoln the 'First Lady' is a figure of some notoriety in the USA. She is incarcerated in an insane asylum after committal proceedings instigated by her own son. This book tells her own story.

A Novel

Mrs Lincoln

Mrs Mary Lincoln admitted today - from Chicago - Age 56 - Widow of ex-President Lincoln - declared insane by the Cook County Court May 19th - 1875. - Patient Progress Reports for Bellevue Place Sanatorium. Incarcerated in an insane asylum after committal proceedings instigated by her own son, Mary Lincoln resolves to tell her own story in order to preserve and to prove her own sanity. Mary Todd Lincoln the original F̀irst Lady' is a figure of some notoriety in the USA: readers introduced to her for the first time will encounter a fascinating, complex and captivating heroine of history.

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.

A novel about the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, narrated by the First Lady herself, a USA Today choice for Best Historical Fiction of the Year. The wife of Abraham Lincoln is one of history’s most misunderstood and enigmatic women. She was a political strategist, a supporter of emancipation, and a mother who survived the loss of three children and the assassination of her beloved husband. She also ran her family into debt, held seances in the White House, and was committed to an insane asylum—which is where Janis Cooke Newman’s debut novel begins. From her room in Bellevue Place, Mary chronicles her tempestuous childhood in a slaveholding Southern family and takes readers through the years after her husband’s death, revealing the ebbs and flows of her passion and depression, her poverty and ridicule, and her ultimate redemption, in a novel that is both a fascinating look at a nineteenth-century woman’s experience and “an old-fashioned pleasure to read” (The Plain Dealer). A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

Janis Cooke Newman

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