{"id":1264,"date":"2020-11-01T17:21:45","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T22:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/?p=1264"},"modified":"2020-11-01T17:21:45","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T22:21:45","slug":"first-ladies-in-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/?p=1264","title":{"rendered":"First ladies in fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last year I wrote about two memoirs of First Ladies &#8211; by Michelle Obama and Laura Bush. Today, in honor of our upcoming election, I would like to share two books I&#8217;ve recently read about First Ladies who appear in fictional accounts of their lives.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Mrs. Lincoln&#8217;s Sisters,&#8221; by Jennifer Chiaverini, who seems to be finding a niche writing novels about Mary Todd Lincoln (see Mrs. Lincoln&#8217;s Dressmaker, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln&#8217;s Rival), presents Mrs. Lincoln as a somewhat unpleasant and unlikeable First Lady, although she did seem to adore her husband, Abraham. I didn&#8217;t find the book to be very interesting, but I did learn a lot about Mary Todd Lincoln and her family, especially her sisters, who didn&#8217;t seem to be overly patient or kind to their famous sister.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, Curtis Sittenfeld writes a brilliant and engaging novel about Hillary Rodman, &#8220;Rodman,&#8221; which surmises what would happen if Hillary turned down Bill Clinton&#8217;s third offer of marriage, and went on to live her own life. While at times the politics of the book made it drag, overall this is a tour de force, written with some wonderful humor. I loved how this book turned out, and found Hillary Rodman quite an endearing character. I was really cheering her on throughout the book.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of how the election on Tuesday turns out, I can see foresee that a novel about Melania would be quite fascinating, don&#8217;t you?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/ballot-box.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1265 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/ballot-box.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"960\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year I wrote about two memoirs of First Ladies &#8211; by Michelle Obama and Laura Bush. Today, in honor of our upcoming election, I would like to share two books I&#8217;ve recently read about First Ladies who appear in fictional accounts of their lives. &#8220;Mrs. Lincoln&#8217;s Sisters,&#8221; by Jennifer Chiaverini, who seems to be &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/?p=1264\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">First ladies in fiction<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[473,534,533],"class_list":["post-1264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-first-ladies","tag-mrs-lincolns-sisters","tag-rodman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1267,"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions\/1267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}