Booth: A Novel

"How did the spawn of an abolitionist, vegetarian father become the rabid secessionist who assassinated Abraham Lincoln? That question underpins this gripping novel, but Karen Joy Fowler also centers John Wilkes Booth’s family members: among them, father Junius, a wildly famous Shakespearean actor as well as a manic drunk, and sister Rosalie, retrieved from obscurity and given a story of her own. Booth is historical fiction, but it’s impossible to ignore the resonance with present-day America. In her author’s note, Fowler writes: “The more I read of Lincoln’s warnings concerning the tyrant and the mob … the more brightly lit the road from there to here became.”"