In recent decades the Ann Rutledge story has been treated as mythical rather than as an account of Abraham Lincoln's first but doomed love affair. In The Shadows Rise, the first book-length treatment of the subject, John Evangelist Walsh restores Ann Rutledge to her rightful place in the historical record.

In 1945 the noted Lincoln scholar James G. Randall stated in his Lincoln biography that no real evidence existed to confirm Lincoln's love for Ann or the tales of his profound grief at her early death. Later, in the 1990s, John Y. Simon and Douglas Wilson began the rehabilitation of Rutledge with a reexamination of Herndon's papers.

Now, in The Shadows Rise, Walsh transcends and transforms recent research, re-creating the Lincoln-Rutledge story in all its dramatic fullness and depth. Along with new material and new interpretations he supplies some old-fashioned common sense. Highlights include convincing reconstructions of Lincoln's New Salem friends and Walsh's fresh examination of the Mary Owens affair, in which Lincoln's offer of marriage was refused.