First Family

John and Abigail Adams left a remarkable portrait of their lives together in their personal correspondence: both were prolific letter writers (although John conceded that Abigail was the more gifted), and over the years they exchanged more than twelve hundred letters. Joseph J. Ellis distills them to give us an account both intimate and panoramic; part biography, part political history, and part love story. Ellis describes their first meeting as inauspicious--John was twenty-four, Abigail just fifteen, and each was entirely unimpressed. But they soon began a passionate correspondence that resulted in their marriage five years later. Over the next decades, the couple were separated nearly as much as they were together. When John became president, Abigail's health led to reservations about moving to the swamp on the Potomac, but he persuaded her that he needed his closest advisor by his side. Here, John and Abigail's relationship unfolds in the context of America's birth as a nation.--From publisher description.