“Fowler has done her research, and Booth’s family comes alive with complex characterizations and uneasy truths that ring true two centuries later. No easy answers here, but beautiful writing, Americana setting, and complex motivations that give the reader a sense of peeking into one of the most infamous historic American families.” – ATS Staff
A fascinating fictionalized in-depth look at one of the most notorious murderers in American history: John Wilkes Booth. Karen Joy Fowler takes us into the curious and strange large Booth family that birthed him. Obsessed with the stage, his eccentric father and older brother, his reclusive and resentful sister, and how such a family produced such a narcissistic murderer obsessed with a perverse kind of nationalism. The best kind of historical fiction teaches us what history could have been like, with a good dose of truth weaved in.