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Portrait of a Marriage
Ballantine Books
June 2008
On Sale: May 20, 2008
576 pages
ISBN: 0345477995
EAN: 9780345477996
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
The first full-length portrait of the marriage of Abraham
and Mary Todd Lincoln in more than fifty years, The
Lincolns is a fascinating new work of American history by
Daniel Mark Epstein, an award-winning biographer and poet
known for his passionate understanding of the Civil War
period. Although the private lives of political couples have in our
era become front-page news, the true story of this
extraordinary and tragic first family has never been fully
told. The Lincolns eclipses earlier accounts with riveting
new information that makes husband and wife, president and
first lady, come alive in all their proud accomplishments
and earthy humanity. Epstein gives a fresh close-up view of the couple’s life in
Springfield, Illinois (of their twenty-two years of
marriage, all but six were spent there). We witness the
troubled courtship of an aristocratic and bewitching
Southern belle and a struggling young lawyer who concealed
his great ambition with self-deprecating humor; the
excitement and confusion of the newlyweds as they begin
their marriage in a small room above a tavern, and the
early signs of Mary’s instability and Lincoln’s moodiness;
their joyful creation of a home on the edge of town as
Lincoln builds his law practice and makes his first forays
into politics. We discover their consuming ambition as
Lincoln achieves celebrity status during his famed debates
with Stephen A. Douglas, which lead to Lincoln’s election
to the presidency. The Lincolns’ ascent to the White House brought both
dazzling power and the slow, secret unraveling of the
couple’s unique bond. The Lincolns dramatizes certain well-
known events with stunning new immediacy: Mary’s shopping
sprees, her defrauding of the public treasury to increase
her budget, and her jealousy, which made enemies for her
and problems for the president. Yet she was also a
brilliant hostess who transformed the shabby White House
into a social center crucial to the Union’s success. After
the death of their little boy, not a year after Lincoln
took office, Mary turned for solace to spirit mediums, but
her grief drove her to the edge of madness. In the end,
there was little left of the Lincolns’ relationship save
their enduring devotion to each other and to their
surviving children. Written with enormous sweep and striking imagery, The
Lincolns is an unforgettable epic set at the center of a
crucial American administration. It is also a heartbreaking
story of how time and adversity can change people, and of
how power corrupts not only morals but affections. Daniel
Mark Epstein’s The Lincolns makes two immortal American
figures seem as real and human as the rest of us.
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