Mrs. Adams In Winter by Michael O'Brien

From The Week of April 11, 2010

If Mrs. Adams In Winter was no more than the chronicle of the first and only foreign-born First Lady of the United States, it would be an engaging portrait of an interesting woman navigating her way through one of the most bellicose periods in European history. But Mr. O'Brien widens the scope of this account from the mere facts about his subject, zooming out so that he might capture a snapshot of history which proves to be as edifying as Mrs. Adams is interesting.

The core of Mrs. Adams In Winter concerns a remarkable journey executed by Louisa Adams, the daughter-in-law of John Adams, from the court of Czar Alexander at St. Petersburg to Paris, France, during the winter of 1815. This she managed without support from her husband, whom she intended to meet in Paris, nor any other adult member of her family. She had with her only servants and the questionable loyalty of a single soldier who she hired onto the journey after realizing they shared a common destination. It would be difficult enough to cross Russia in the winter in modern convenience. Imagine then traveling by wagon, through a country not yet marked out with adequate roads, through the chill of ice and snow, with no allies to rely on and no one to call for help. Then imagine doing all this while crossing a Europe suffering the aftershocks of the Congress at Vienna which re-drew the map of Europe after it had been thrown into chaos by Napoleonic conquest. And now perhaps you can imagine why this brave woman and her wintery feat drew the attention of an author worthy of recounting it.

Sandwiching the journey itself are descriptions of the countries through which Mrs. Adams travelled, along with their rulers and their customs. The aristocracies with which Mrs. Adams was familiar are artfully drawn, as is the portrait of our primary subject who, despite her many successes and strengths, evinces a loneliness that is naked on the page. There's a stoic sadness here that is shared by Mrs. Adams and the territory through which she ventures, a kind of post-war, melancholic silence in which there is room to ask why: why war, why suffering, why is life the way it is... This work will not inspire sunny thoughts, but its heroine is admirable in the face of all that she confronts, projecting a quiet strength that connects with us across all the decades. A story that is much more than the sum of its parts. (4/5 Stars)