Lincoln's love triangle

A love triangle involving Abraham Lincoln? Well, yes, and what's more, Louis Bayard's 2019 novel Courting Mr. Lincoln sticks fairly close to the historical record.

Lincoln and Mary Todd show up in Springfield, Ill., at about the same time. Gangly and ignorant of how to dress and behave in polite society, Lincoln comes to town to launch both his legal and his political careers. Mary moves in with her sister to try to find a suitable husband, although her outspokenness has so far turned suitors away.

Unable to afford a room of his own, Lincoln accepts an offer to share a bed with Joshua Speed, a merchant with good prospects and a man seen as Mary's best prospect. Yet Joshua and Mary, it turns out, are each more interested in Lincoln than in each other.

An older woman in Springfield who views herself as both a political kingmaker and a matchmaker, sees potential in Lincoln that is still invisible to others, but she knows he needs a wife to get very far in politics. She settles on Mary Todd as the best choice, and she conspires to bring the two of them together in secret in her home.

Wondering where his friend is spending his afternoons, a jealous Speed has Lincoln followed, then he reveals the secret to Mary's sister, believing that will end the affair. And it does, but only temporarily. How Abraham and Mary eventually get back together and what happens in the Lincoln-Speed friendship occupies the rest of this engrossing and very unusual romantic novel.

So did Lincoln have homosexual leanings? Bayard raises the possibility, but leaves the question unanswered. just as history does.