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by: Barbara Hambly
Amazon.com's Price: $7.50 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780553585650
ISBN: 0553585657
Label: Bantam
Manufacturer: Bantam
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 816
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
Publisher: Bantam
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Sales Rank: 82245
Studio: Bantam
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
As a girl growing up in Kentucky, she lived a sheltered, privileged life filled with picnics and plantation balls. Vivacious, impulsive, and intoxicated by politics, she is a Todd of Lexington, an aristocratic family whose ancestors defeated the British. But no one knows her secret fears and anxieties. Although she is courted by the most eligible suitors in the land, including future senator Stephen Douglas, it is a gangly lawyer from Illinois who captures her heart. After a stormy courtship and a broken engagement, Abraham Lincoln will marry twenty-four-year-old Mary Todd and give her a ring inscribed with the words “Love Is Eternal.”
But their happiness won’t last nearly so long. Their first child will be born under the gathering clouds of a civil war, and three more follow. As Lincoln’s star rises, the pleasure-loving Mary learns, often the hard way, the rules of being a politician’s wife. But by the time the fiery storm of war passes, tragedy will have claimed two sons, scandal will shadow her days as First Lady, and an assassin’s bullet will take Lincoln himself, leaving Mary alone and all but forgotten by the nation that owed her husband its survival.
Yet it is in the years to come that Mary Todd Lincoln will truly come into her own. In public, she will fight to preserve Lincoln’s memory even as she battles a bitterly contested insanity trial. In private, she will struggle with depression and addiction as she endures the betrayals–both real and imagined–of family and friends.
With a gifted novelist’s imagination and a historian’s eye for detail, Barbara Hambly tells a story of astonishing scope, richly peopled with real-life characters and their fictional counterparts, a tour-de-force tale of power, politics, and the role of women in nineteenth- century America. The result is a Mary Todd Lincoln few have seen and none will forget–the fascinating, controversial woman of whom her husband could say: “My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl and I fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out”–Mary Todd, the woman who loved Abraham Lincoln.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - very amateur historian's view
nearly all of the historical facts noted in the novel were correct and the embelishments plausible. easy to read and enjoyable. I did learn much about Mrs. Lincoln's life.
Rating:  - FINALLY! A book that ACCURATELY speaks about Mary Lincoln!
I began my research into Mary Todd Lincoln when I was 17 when I read "Love is eternal". I did my essays on Mary Lincoln for my final exams in my 11th and 12th grade and my final dissertation on Mary Lincoln that earned me my Ph.d. in graduate school. I have been obsessed with reading and researching Mary Todd Lincoln for 22 years now, and it was a breath of fresh air to finally read a novel that put this wonderful first lady in it's true light.
History has deemed Mary Todd Lincoln in ... Read More
Rating: - Another good one
This is a great book. Hambly's historical facts are always awesome, and she doesn't let us down in this book. Mary Todd Lincoln was so badly torn down by the press and public of her day, and many now see her as simply insane. This book lets us see much more of the reality of her circumstances. It also makes Abraham Lincoln much more "human". They had much personal tragedy in their lives. I know this book is historical fiction, but there's a lot of fact in it as well. Ms. Hambly has used common ... Read More
Rating: - Research, details provide context for Mary Todd Lincoln's story
Barbara Hambly's "The Emancipator's Wife" is a remarkably well researched fictional narrative of the life of Mary Todd Lincoln. That she lived with mental illness is not disputed - ample evidence exists to suggest that she was bi-polar. However, history has damned her for displaying anxiety and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, for shopping and relying excessively on "elixers" of the day (which were loaded with opiates and alcohol) to distract, soothe and medicate herself (both practices ... Read More
Rating: - The Emancipator's Wife - WOW
The Emancipator's Wife
by Barbara Hambly
Premise: The life and times of Mary Todd aka Mrs. Abraham Lincoln.
Review: Weirdly enough I have seen a couple of reviews on this book that complain that there's not enough info on Lincoln or battles, etc on the Civil War. My take on that is "Huh?" Did they not read the title? It's called The Emancipator's WIFE. This is not a book about Licoln or the war, though both are definitely involved. This is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln. ... Read More
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