His sometimes charming, sometimes irritating naivety is the reader’s rudder for the majority of the book as he strives to navigate the changes in his life and his city.

Jack, an idealistic boy from NYC and the book’s primary narrator, is coping with the loss of his eyesight and his father by searching for Nazis with his code-o-graph. In this latest work, set in 1942 Manhattan and pre-World War II Berlin, we follow the converging stories of Jack and Jakob as they seek to make a difference in the world. A Lincoln, Janis Cooke Newman immerses readers in a particular time period. It's a quick read and does give insights into this complex person.In A Master Plan for Rescue, as in her first historical-fiction novel, Mary: Mrs. The story is a bit dry as it delves deeply into the legal proceedings that surrounded the affair. The author's conclude that Mary was indeed mentally unbalanced and that the efforts to protect her from herself and from dissipating her estate by continued compulsive spending were justified. The book delves into the historiography of previous efforts to describe the event and concludes that most were deficient in several ways, mostly portraying Mary as the subject of unfair treatment by the medical profession and legal processes. (She reminds one of the so-called 'hoarders' shown on today's reality TV.) Mary had continue after Lincoln's death to spend money wildly, often on buying sprees for clothes and jewelry that she never used. The action also made Robert the conservator of Mary's money. The papers deal with the process of making the finding (through the opinions of experts) before a jury. Lincoln had preserved letters and legal documents about his mother being declared insane in 1875 and committed to an asylum in Illinois.

When his estate was turned over to a foundation in the 1970's a file of papers labeled MTL Insanity Papers was discovered in a safe in his study. Lincoln, the eldest and only surviving son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, became quite prosperous in business as President of the Pullman rail car company. I picked this up while visiting Hildene, Robert Todd Lincoln's estate in Manchester, Vermont.

Mary by Janis Cooke Newman