A new novel about Lincoln

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi Sally,

I was intrigued by all the great reviews on Amazon. Posters are raving about it, so I went ahead and ordered a copy about a month ago. I am kind of torn on whether I enjoyed it as much as everyone else did. On the one hand it's the first time I have ever read a book on Lincoln in that type of format style... first person historical fiction...seeing events and people as they must have appeared to AL. I loved the earthy humor-the chapters where he meets and courts Mary are really extremely funny. Some people seemed put off by the portrayal of his sexuality for reasons I am not sure of. He was by most accounts a very earthy man, do they assume he never had sex? Or that he didn't enjoy it like regular men-just lay back and thought of the Union or something?

What bothered me is that there were huge chunks of his life missing. The period of time in Congress was skipped altogether, the Springfield years were barely mentioned. The passages dealing with Mary's descent into madness and her husband's awareness of it were poignant and effective, the underlying suggestion of Mary's borderline incestuous fixation with Robert not so much. I was also confused with AL's intense attachment to Lizzie Keckley. I didn't understand it, or where the author intended to go with it.

All in all I did enjoy "I Am Abraham"...he was written as I imagine he must have been in real life...funny, sad, compassionate, tender, earthy. The emphasis is on his emotional, inner experience of the Civil War which is very affecting. But the novel seemed to leave out things I felt were important, and emphasize other things I felt were not...therefore making the experience of reading it feel incomplete.