Mina Edelman believes that she and her family are the Lincolns reincarnated.
Her main task for the next three months: to protect her father from assassination, her mother from insanity, and herself—Willie Lincoln incarnate—from death at age twelve. Apart from that, the summer of 1966 should be like any other. But Mina’s dad begins taking Mina along to hear speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago. And soon he brings the freedom movement to their own small town, with consequences for everyone. Gayle Brandeis has written a novel that is at turns laugh-out-loud funny and wise, acute, and compassionate. In My Life with the Lincolns, she gives us the unforgettable Mina Edelman, a precocious girl who faces, along with saving her family, the puzzling experience of growing up.
"Gayle Brandeis expertly marries a humorous manner to serious matter in My Life with the Lincolns, an original and timely Civil Rights Era novel about a young girl learning to take part in a cause greater than herself. It's a winner."
—Lauren Baratz-Logsted, author of Crazy Beautiful
"Gayle Brandeis has written a richly complex novel in the voice of her brilliant, courageous, funny, young heroine Mina Edelman. Through her whip-smart perceptions, we watch one family struggle through the turbulent 60s—the Vietnam War, feminism, and some of the most heated moments of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago. Just as Mina sees deep connections between the nation's struggles in the 60s to those of Lincoln's presidency, readers will naturally draw correlations to present-day America—essential ones."
—Julianna Baggott, author of Ever Breath and The Prince of Fenway Park
“Twelve-year-old Mina Edelman is convinced that her family is the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln’s. Her father has the same initials and also cares passionately about social justice, sneaking her off to hear Martin Luther King and participate in fair-housing protests in Chicago. But when he brings his idealism home to suburban Downers Grove, 1960s violence touches their own lives and divides her family. Brandeis has created an appealing, quirky protagonist, still childlike in her sensibilities and understanding. Convinced that she is going to die young, like her almost-namesake Willie Lincoln, she diagnoses the pain in her developing breasts as incipient heart failure. She worries that her mother will go crazy and her father will be assassinated. Middle-school readers will know better but enjoy this humorous first-person glimpse into her misconstrued world. Adults don’t see so clearly, either. In her first novel for young readers, the author goes beyond usual stories of the civil-rights movement, demonstrating well-intentioned but tone-deaf gestures of white supporters and the discomfort of change.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“In her first novel for children, adult author Brandeis entwines two historical periods through the voice of narrator Mina, who is convinced that her family members are the Lincolns reincarnated (‘my three main tasks were: 1. Get through age 12 without dropping dead [like Lincoln’s son, Willie]. 2. Stop Mom from going crazy. 3. Stop Dad from getting shot in the skull’). Mina’s overexuberant father invites Mina along as he joins the civil rights movement in 1960s Chicago, and they are soon participating in marches and prayer vigils, while becoming increasingly involved with a black woman and her son. Brandeis doesn’t sidestep the brazen and discomforting inequality that existed, nor the often violent reactions to integration. She weaves in tidbits of Lincoln’s life, while subtly showing readers how history repeats itself (even as Mina works to avoid just that). Familial tension, heightened by disagreements over their involvement in ‘the movement,’ leads to an emotional climax at—where else?—the Lincoln Memorial. This strong showing should leave readers with a trove of Lincoln trivia and gratitude for the contributions of civil rights pioneers.”
—Publishers Weekly