A Friend of Mr. Lincoln

A Novel

By: Stephen Harrigan

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

The Gates of the Alamo

Author Stephen Harrigan returns to his historical fiction roots, reimagining Abraham Lincoln's early life, when he was a young lawyer and rising politician in Springfield, Illinois.

Told from the point of view of Lincoln's best friend, it starts during the Blackhawk War (in which Lincoln served) and ends in the mid-1840s, when Lincoln goes off to Washington after being elected to Congress, and his friend heads west with the Donner party.

The novel is about a crucially formative period in Lincoln's life, when he was ruled by an almost ungovernable ambition and beset by bouts of depression, sometimes ruthlessly trying to advance himself while tortured with self-doubt and questions of personal honor. It tracks his strange on-and-off relationship with Mary Todd, his sudden and puzzling marriage to her, the duel he almost fought with a political opponent, his pragmatic and sometimes contradictory stands on slavery, his desire to be a poet, and his true-to-life flirtation with suicide - all in all, a portrait of a young politician on the make, deeply principled but also deeply flawed.

©2016 Stephen Harrigan (P)2016 Recorded Books

Delightful

Story well woven with fiction into history. Makes me want to read more to find out about Mary Todd Lincoln and Lincoln's early years.

Enjoyable

This was contained enjoyable stories about the early Lincoln told from the point of view from a friend who admired, disagreed with Lincoln, and saw him at his lowest points prior to the Civil War. You hear Lincoln telling off color stories and engaging in behavior that showed his humanness. You see that absent the Civil War he would have been unremembered in history. Being remembered seems to have been an important goal for Lincoln. He made his mark.