Mary was very outspoken and people didn't want her to be outspoken. She should disappear, not marry Aristotle Onassis. Like Jackie Kennedy: The president's widow should be retiring and dignified. She didn't act the way the public expects a president's widow to act, in the way the public still expects. And then she tried to sell her clothes, which was hugely scandalous. She kept petitioning Congress for some sort of pension. After Lincoln died, she had terrible debts, and it took years for his estate to be settled. At the time, she was the most hated woman in America aside from this abortionist in New York.

And all the descriptions I heard of her were always derogatory. That day at the boarding house where Lincoln died and the tour guide described her grief, I really felt like her spirit was there. NVV: Why did you decide to write this book? Adair Lara said to me, 'You're rescuing Mary Todd Lincoln from the slag heap of history.' From a historical point of view, I feel I have become Mary's defender.Īs a novel, it's about a woman searching for love after her mother dies-first from a husband who has difficulty with affection and passion, and then from a son from whom she tries to get affection and love. Janis Cooke Newman: It's about different things on different levels. Recently, the Voice sat down with Newman to chat about Mary, madness in the Victorian era, and the debatable sexiness of a five-dollar bill. A journalist as well, she also wrote a regular column for the Noe Valley Voice, from 1999 to 2003. Newman, who lives in Glen Park ('I like to think of it as Noe Valley South'), is the author of a memoir, The Russian Word for Snow, about the adoption of her son, Alex. Newman learned that the president's widow had become extremely depressed after her husband's death, and that her son Robert Lincoln had put her in an insane asylum in 1875. Lincoln during a tour of Ford's Theater, where John Wilkes Booth assassinated the president. It's called Mary: A Novel, and the 706-page work of historical fiction explores the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's remarkable wife. After much anticipation, Janis Cooke Newman's second book arrives in bookstores on Sept.

Mary by Janis Cooke Newman