First published 2017
Willie Lincoln dies at age eleven in February 1862, just as the Civil War begins to consume the nation. The boy awakens in a Georgetown cemetery, trapped in a strange purgatory filled with restless spirits. These ghosts argue, complain, and perform odd rituals while stuck between life and death. Willie finds himself caught in this liminal space as his grief-stricken father, President Abraham Lincoln, returns repeatedly to the crypt to hold his son's body. The dead souls recognize something unusual about Willie's situation. A battle emerges over the boy's fate as the spirits grapple with their own unfinished business. Lincoln wrestles with devastating loss while leading a country torn apart by war. The story unfolds through multiple voices, both living and dead, real and imagined, creating a theatrical chorus that explores how people endure when everything they cherish faces destruction.
Genres: american-civil-war, american-fiction, 20th-century, american, biography-memoir, 21st-century, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Georgetown, United States
Period: 1862, American Civil War
368 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: child-death, death