What do You think about The Emancipator's Wife (2005)?
The fascinating story of Mary Todd Lincoln encompassing her girlhood to her death. She grew up in Kentucky on a small plantation. Her father was a state politician who was away from home much of the time. Her mother died in childbirth when she was young. She and her stepmother did not get along well. From the time she was very young she had difficulty with her emotions and her temper. At the age of 24 (in danger of becoming an old maid) she married Abraham Lincoln, the one man she truly loved and respected. Their marriage was frought with financial difficulties, wild tantrums and outbursts by Mary, and the deaths of 2 of their 4 sons. Later after Lincoln was assassinated another of their sons also died. Eccentric Mary was then declared insane by her remaining son and placed in a sanitarium. After many years of emotional and physical hardships, and addiction to a large variety of "female elixers" it is difficult to see how Mary could change her life for the better.
—Nancy
I went to see Lincoln last month and remembered I had this book, so I read it. While it is fiction, I am assuming the author portrayed Mary as accurately as she could. According to the author, Mary was probably addicted to patent medicines which were made mostly of opiates. No wonder she was crazy! The book starts when Mary was deemed insane and checked into a "rest home" by her son, then flashes back to times with Lincoln and also her childhood. Mary came off as a likeable but very flawed person. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the conversation the Lincolns had in the carriage before they went to Ford's Theater was the same one from the movie; where they would like to travel. This must have been documented somewhere.I enjoyed the book, although it was long-and it did take me a long time to read it. I learned quite a bit about how women lived in the mid 1800s, and I have a better understanding of Mary Lincoln's history. She and her husband probably came to the White House at one of the toughest times in history. I think she did the best she could have done, and maybe as well as anyone else could have under those circumstances.**SPOILER ALERT** ;-)I cannot imagine surviving the heartache of loosing three children and a husband like she did.
—Sherry Beth Preston
Hambly sets out a complicated task for herself at the beginning of this novel. She opens in 1862, jumps to 1875, and then jumps back to 1825. For the rest of the novel she fills in the blanks between 1825 and 1875, a 50-year span that easily explains why this novel extends to 600 pages. I think this was a bit ambitious, since she was forced to simply summarize many pieces of Mary Todd Lincoln's life. When Hambly devotes enough time and space to tell more detailed stories, the novel comes alive, as it does when Mary buys jewelry without her father's approval, taunts her stepmother, is exposed to the abolitionist movement, goes off to school, and falls in love with Abraham Lincoln. But too often, particularly after the two are married, Hambly slips into summary of a season or even several years, and what she skims over in writing, I skimmed over in reading.Overall, an excellent take on what it might've been like to be Mary Todd Lincoln. Hambly portrays her as a well-rounded character, full of flaws and full of strengths, limited by the societal forces of her time, and struggling to find power over her own life in anyway she can.
—Katherine
