Booth
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A gripping historical novel in the bestselling tradition of The Alienist and Time and Again, Booth brings vividly to life a figure who continues to haunt the American imagination--John Wilkes Booth. The story begins as an elderly John Surratt, the only conspirator to escape a hanging sentence for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, is asked by film director D.W. Griffith to recount the harrowing events of his youth during the screenings of Griffith's film Birth of a Nation. The request prompts Surratt to reread his detailed diaries, begun in 1864 when he was first befriended by John Wilkes Booth and was unwittingly enmeshed in Booth's plot to assassinate the President.
Told through a series of flashbacks, the novel both chronicles the young, naive Surratt's tragic coming of age as he belatedly realizes the nature of the plot Booth has sucked him into, and illuminates the motivations, larger-than-life appetites, and appeal of the charismatic and world-famous stage actor. As Surratt delves further into the diaries and transcripts, it is clear the young Surratt has become trapped in Booth's web of seduction and betrayal. Further insight into the assassination plot is revealed in a surprising twist when the genuine diary that Booth left behind, explaining his actions and implicating others around him, falls into Surratt's hands (a Booth diary, with several missing pages, does exist and is on public display at the Ford Theater in Washington).
Compulsively readable, and filled with brilliant period detail--as well as a dozen reproductions of actual photographs of the conspirators and their execution, Booth is a powerful evocation of a dangerous, chaotic, and tragic time in our history, a story that continues to resonate to this day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With its Civil War backdrop and its presentation (including period photographs) of a heinous crime involving real-life figures, Robertson's first novel brings to mind two other fiction debuts, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Caleb Carr's The Alienist. The book doesn't match the literary sophistication of the former or the storytelling prowess of the latter, but it offers its own potent inducements, notably an immensely compelling subject--the plot to assassinate Lincoln--and a charismatic antihero, John Wilkes Booth. Less successful is the unwieldy structure erected by Robertson (Sly and Able, a biography of James F. Byrnes) to vivify Booth, largely through the eyes of James Surratt, the only alleged conspirator tried and found not guilty. Most of the narrative is flashback, framed by Surratt's account of his meetings in 1916 with D.W. Griffith, who wishes to exploit Surratt's story for commercial gain. The flashbacks themselves arise from Surratt's 1864-65 fictionalized diary (which lacks the spontaneity of true diary entries), from trial transcripts and, briefly, from Booth's fictionalized diary as he flees Union retribution. With all these elements, the narrative has a patchwork feel, but one sewn of deep-hued, velvety cloth. Robertson's portrayals--particularly of the naive Surratt and his love-starved mother (later hanged for conspiracy), and of the man who seduces them both, the mercurial, generous, egomaniacal Booth--bloom with nuance. His depictions of urban life and battlefield death at the time carry the impression of truth. Above all, the novel, despite its scribble-scrabble structure and mechanical plot ploys (the attention-getting frame; Surratt's encounter with Lincoln shortly before the killing) brilliantly capitalizes on the inexorability of historical fact; few readers will put it down as it surges toward the horror of April 14, 1865, and beyond. Major ad/promo; author tour.
