I grew up with a dislike for history that took a turn only after I got out of school. As an adult, able to find my own fascinations with certain periods of history like the Holocaust or Civil War or the Civil Rights movement (among others), through it all I have had a fascination with Abraham Lincoln that led me to this incredibly-crafted and well-researched novel; my first Louis Bayard, but certainly not my last. I had a cursory knowledge of Mary Todd Lincoln before reading amazing book, which amounts to a story about Lincoln and the two people who loved him most: his wife Mary, and his dearest friend Joshua Speed. The novel opens with Mary, newly-arrived in Springfield and less than thrilled with the newly-minted capital city of Illinois. Thrown immediately into the dating pool, Mary's extremely open (for the time) personality and knowledge of politics make her immediately popular, earning her the nickname "The Belle of Springfield" and guaranteeing her entrance to any social event in the area. During her introduction to the city, Mary soon meets Joshua Speed, a man of noble bearing who owns his own dry goods store, and the two strike up a friendship that at first has Mary wondering where (or if) things may go further ... until she meets Speed's best friend, Abraham Lincoln, the small-town lawyer who has already gained immense popularity in political circles.
Lincoln is shy, almost withdrawn, with Mary - and as time and circumstances put them together at various social events, she finds herself intrigued by him more and more. Courting Mr. Lincoln would have stood up well as the story of Abraham and Mary, how they met and came to fall in love/marry, but Bayard also gives us just as strong a bromance in the relationship between Lincoln and Speed, in many ways just as forged in steel. Some historical records suggest there may have been more than just friendship between the two men - that, in fact, Lincoln himself may have been bisexual - but while Bayard touches on a few leanings of such possibilities here, he wisely leaves it up to the reader to discern just how close these incredibly close friends may have been. The novel goes back and forth between Mary and Speed's points of view, never Lincoln's, but Bayard's skills as a writer not only easily transport you back to the mid-19th century, to the tiniest detail, but through the eyes of both wife and dear friend readers are treated to a portrait of a personable, endearing, flawed, and wholly-human sixteenth president of the United States before he got there, in a way that reads infinitely more real than much nonfiction. A beautiful, touching novel that easily makes my list of Best Books I've read for the year, already; had I read something like this back in high school, I would never have wasted all those years disliking history! 5/5 stars
NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.
Author photo (c) Tim Coburn Photography
No comments:
Post a Comment