This is an account of the life and political times of Abigail Adams and her family before, during, and after the Revolutionary War through her and John Adams' letters. Includes her children's lives, especially her son, John Quincy Adams. ( )

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "More great reading about the founding of America from the dedicated letter writers John and Abigail Adams. She was a much a founding parent as he, definitely influencing his thinking and actions. From amazon.com online review: "This book chronicles their remarkable marriage, her blossoming feminism, her battles with the loneliness of separation, and her friendships with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other giants of her time. Intelligent, resourceful, and outspoken, Abigail Adams lived an uncommon life for a woman of her time. First published in 1981, Dearest Friend brings her legacy to our century"" ( )

LOVE this style of writing. Completely non-academic. Lynne Withey tells the story of Abigail Adams with great care and nuance. And what a wonderful subject. Abagail was an amazing woman for her time; perfectly suited for the brilliant but typically cantankerous John Adams.

Highly recommend. ( )

Owning this book was sort of an accident. I had put a book called My Dearest Friend on my wishlist -- it was supposed to be largely just the collected letters between Abigail and John Adams. Andrew had made a list of the books on my wishlist and headed to a local bookstore and picked this up instead, thinking he'd gotten the book on my list. Oh, well. It was still very sweet!

This is more a straight-up biography, of course largely based on those letters, among other things, and sometimes containing excerpts from those letters. It seemed promising, with a lovely quote on the front from The Boston Globe of all places, saying it was "as lively, sensible, and forthright as the woman about whom it is written..." Personally, I would drop the word "lively" from the description. At times this book was so dry that the only thing that kept me reading was how excessively interested in Abigail Adams I have been from the beginning.

I acknowledge that I may have made the author's task more difficult by an over-familiarity with the subject. The basic details of her life I already know -- from 1776 and the John Adams mini-series, among other places. Every once in a while, Dearest Friend would sputter into life, and I would sit up, feeling like I was getting a truer glimpse into the details of Abigail's life -- a feeling for what it really must have been like to live that life. Then it would fade back into what seemed like a dry recitation of "and then this happened, and then this...."

I am probably being overly harsh on this poor book. Maybe the quote on the cover jaded me. Maybe I just wanted too deeply to be swept away with love for Abigail. Certainly I read the entire book with interest. But still, I want the book that was originally on my list. ( )

When my grandmother passed a few years ago, I inherited some of her books (as the big reader in the family, almost by default). Among them was this one - a book that my mother had given her to read with the note you'll find at the bottom of this post.

I honestly don't know why I put up with having so many biographies in my possession. I dislike them immensely. They rarely illustrate a full life, especially when it's the life of someone who lived so long ago; we are subject to what was left behind almost incidentally as opposed to recorded, on top of which the writer - who means to interpret and illustrate that life for the reader - often leaves off the least-appetizing bits and inflates the subject's importance.

I don't deny Abigail Adams her influence. She was assuredly one of the most influential women in early American history, and she definitely suffered for it. But in Dearest Friend Lynn Withey really makes it feel as if Abigail was the only influential woman of the time, which is incorrect. And while Withey does not shy away from Abigail's personal faults, she does gloss them over by focusing so strongly on her loneliness, as if that were an excuse.

And from this book, you cannot tell that Abigail and John had any real feeling for one another. The author describes letters between the two of them and often fills space by saying that John did not write often, but still insists that the feelings were strong. In 1981, when this book was first published, this might have been acceptable. In 2016, it doesn't pass muster. I would rather have just read their letters. Instead, it was just a lot of Abigail Adams feeling sorry for herself and trying to control everyone else.

She decides to add rooms to her house, but we don't get an explanation of why. She agrees with her husband's politics (Federalist) until suddenly neither of them do, and then she starts agreeing with the Republicans - but so little is said about what was happening at the time and what could have influenced that change in her vision other than a mention of John Quincy explaining something that we never get the benefit of understanding; it reads more like an outline than a true-to-life story. It's an illustration that is neither complete nor appealing and, as a reader, it is a bit of an affront to my intelligence.

One note: in the epilogue, Withey mentions that although Abigail did not live to see it (spoiler alert?)
she was the "first and only woman ever to be both wife and mother of American Presidents." In 2001, 20 years after this book was published and 200 years since John Adams vacated the Presidency, Barbara Bush became the second. Though I very much doubt that Mrs. Bush ever had to make as many sacrifices, or was ever called on to advise, as much as Abigail was. I also very much doubt that Barbara would ever be caught hanging her laundry in the east room of the White House.

www.theliterarygothamite.com ( )