Three star review, originally posted here on May 27th, 2024.
Full disclosure: I came to this book after watching the TV show that is (supposedly) based on this book. The show interweaves tons of fascinating storylines, which was great. But the problem was that I couldn’t keep all of the stories straight, and, frankly, had pretty much no idea what was going on. “Oh man, I’m really looking forward to learning more about all of this in the book! I bet the book will be fantastic! And dang, I can’t believe how good this story is!” So imagine my surprise when I was halfway through the book and realized that the TV show added a whole bunch of stuff that’s never even touched in the book. Doh! So, if you’re hoping to learn about Mary Simms, the enslaved woman who testified against Dr. Mudd, too bad! Or if you’re confused on what the heck is happening up in Montreal and how it’s related to anything, too bad! And so on and so forth. The audiobook ends with an interview with the author, where he explained that (of course) the hardest part of writing the book was deciding what to leave out, since there is an eternal fountain worth of material to pick through. So I can appreciate that the showrunners decided to add a bunch of that material back in to make for better television (even though, as I’ve learned in doing my own research afterwards, they also kind of just made some shit up.) Anyway, consider yourself warned regarding the TV show.
As for the book, it’s fine. It mostly follows John Wilkes Boothe, the assassination, and Booth’s escape in impressive detail. It’s short on other related stories, though. Sadly, even with just the narrow scope, I managed to get a little lost from time to time. A lot of people helped Booth along his escape journey, and I often missed or forgot the descriptions of who the different people were and why they wound up helping in the first place. Maybe I would have done better with the written book instead of the audiobook, and maybe this is just a “me” thing, but I dunno. I can recall a moment where the author introduces us to a character (don’t remember who), and then gives some serious foreshadowing by suggesting the character has a big secret that would terrify Booth. Then… nothing. We switch to some other subplot. If we ever got back to what this character’s secret was, it wasn’t clear to me. The storytelling just could have been tighter.
All that being said, I still liked the book and am glad I read it. The details we did get were pretty impressive. I was amazed by how much we know about Booth’s final days, even reading passages from his diary on the road. If you’re interested in some straightforward post-Civil War history, this is worth picking up. If you’re hoping for more complex analysis or a big sweeping story, this isn’t it.
Helga without the H 