Best Book of the Year
Real Simple - AARP - USA Today - NPR - Virginia Living
Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
From the Man Booker finalist and bestselling author of We Are All
Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic and intimate novel about the
family behind one of the most infamous figures in American history: John
Wilkes Booth.
In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles
northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over
the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth--breadwinner,
celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways
than one--is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying
instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the
country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and
civil war.
As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden
lives to cement their place as one of the country's leading theatrical
families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced,
multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take
their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to
reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an
early prophecy.
Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and
a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.
