Booth

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....