My Dearest Friend,

In a flirtatious courtship letter to his future wife, Abigail, John Adams addresses her as "Miss Adorable." After she died 56 years later, the nation's second president writes his son that his capacity for grief was so exhausted that death "has no sting left for me."

Last update: November 19, 2007 - 10:07 PM

In between, the remarkable relationship between one of early America's most important couples is chronicled in more than 1,100 letters.

A new book, "My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams," compiles 289 of the letters that its editors hope will provide new insight into the couple and the first days of the country they helped found. "My Dearest Friend," named after the salutation with which both John and Abigail Adams often began their letters, offers a look at the span of their relationship, starting with John's love-struck courtship letter in 1762 and ends with his grief over her death in 1818. It includes 75 newly published postwar letters, a period that saw Adams ascend to the vice presidency, then into a difficult presidency, before being defeated by Thomas Jefferson in 1800.

Caroline Keinath of the Adams National Historical Park said, "You really get a sense of ... what it was really like during the Revolution -- emotionally, physically, intellectually. It makes John and Abigail real." AP