Unlikely Friendship (Great Episodes): A Novel of Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley by Rinaldi, Ann | Paperback | Juvenile Fiction

A "fascinating" novel that brings the relationship between the First Lady and an African American seamstress to life (VOYA).

On the night of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, his frantic wife, Mary, wants desperately to speak to her best friend and confidante, Elizabeth Keckley. But the guards keep her away. They have no idea that the First Lady shares a close friendship with a black dressmaker . . .

How did these two women—one who grew up in a wealthy Southern home and became the wife of the president of the United States, the other who was born a slave and eventually purchased her own freedom—come to be such close companions? This fictionalized dual biography delves into the childhoods of these two fascinating women who became devoted friends amid the turbulent times of the Lincoln administration.

"Both personalities are well drawn, with real anxieties and emotions." —School Library Journal