02773cam a2200361 i 4500 381375427 TxAuBib 20190426120000.0 180618s2019||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2018028814 9781616208479 hardcover $27.95 1616208473 hardcover $27.95 (OCoLC)1041205692 TxAuBib rda Bayard, Louis,. Courting Mr. Lincoln / Louis Bayard. First edition (hardcover - black and blue spine - white letters.) Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2019. 379 pages ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier "A miracle; an exquisite story exquisitely told . . . If you love Jane Austen, or Hamilton , or fiction--of any era--that transports and transforms in equal measure, look no further." --A.J. Finn, bestselling author of The Woman in the Window From the prizewinning author of Mr. Timothy and The Pale Blue Eye comes Courting Mr. Lincoln , the page-turning and surprising story of a young Abraham Lincoln and the two people who loved him best: a young, marriageable Mary Todd and Lincoln's best friend, Joshua Speed. When sparky and independent Mary Todd arrives in Springfield, Illinois, in the 1840s to live with her sister, who is determined to find Mary a husband, she is astonished to find herself drawn to an awkward, melancholic lawyer with a gift for oratory. The two share ambition, an obsession with politics--and a need to be suitably married off. Always at Lincoln's side, however, is the charming Joshua Speed, a shopkeeper who became his mentor in society, loyal friend, roommate--and possible lover. Told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Todd and Speed, this witty, psychologically astute, and brilliantly plotted novel follows the threesome during Todd and Lincoln's tumultuous courtship, with all the suspense and delight of the best Jane Austen novels. Historians have long speculated that Lincoln and Speed had a romantic relationship, and here Bayard explores that forbidden possibility with deep empathy. Rich with both period detail and contemporary insight, Courting Mr. Lincoln offers smart storytelling at the highest level. 20190426. Lincoln, Mary Todd, 1818-1882 Fiction. Lincoln, Abraham 1809-1865 Fiction. Speed, Joshua F (Joshua Fry), 1814-1882 Fiction. Courtship Fiction. Springfield (Ill.) History 19th century Fiction. Biographical fiction. Historical fiction. TXMLR