The True Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography

[L Verge]

I may have missed a previous mention of this on the forum, but Surratt House is now selling a 2014 book by the above title and authored by Betty Boles Ellison, who serves on the Kentucky Mansions Preservation Foundation board and assisted with the preservation and restoration of Mrs. Lincoln's childhood home, which was slated to be demolished about thirty years ago - but was saved by the state's first lady at that time. The governor's wife toured Surratt House way back when and fell in love with our parlor. We gave her a source for ingrain carpeting.

Has anyone read the book and can comment on it? I love her opening quote on the Preface (taken from Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln by Henry B. Rankin, 1916):

"If she was not a favorite as First Lady of the Land - lacking that indefinable quality in which her husband excelled - surely that was no reason why her less fortunate traits should be magnified to the neglect of others not only more numerous, but lovely and winning. There is nothing in our history more manly, more cruel, than the treatment of that noble woman by a prying, gossiping press which pursued into her lonely years. Here at last is the testimony of one who knew her, bearing witness to her worth as a woman, her loyalty as a wfe and her service to her country, and bespeaking for her - what will not always be denied - a place beside her husband in the grateful and venerate memory of the Republic."