Old Abe: A Novel recounts the final five years of Abraham Lincoln's life, the most cataclysmic years of America's history. Bound to Lincoln's side, every minute of this vivid novel details the president's struggles. We follow him as national tragedy deepens, as he struggles and presses ahead, and as he comes to life once again fighting to save the country. This story spans from the spring of 1860 in Illinois to Lincoln's election and the calamity of the Civil War, to his assassination at the height of his power. During the war, death surrounds him. Lincoln walks the bloody battlefields of Virginia and Maryland. He peers down the Potomac River through a spyglass, searching for approaching Confederate gunboats that reports have warned him off. He feels death stalk him as one summer evening, a would-be assassin fires a shot that passes through his hat.
At the White House, he weeps over the body of Willie, his second son to die in childhood. Lincoln tries desperately to hold the Union together, searching for a general who will fight for him. Amid national and personal tragedy, he struggles to find meaning in the war and bring freedom to Southern slaves.
Central to this novel is a love story - the story of Abraham and Mary Lincoln's stormy yet devoted marriage. Mary Todd Lincoln's strong will and ambition for her husband helped drive him to the White House, but the presidency takes an incredible toll on her. Mary grows increasingly frightened and insecure. Lincoln watches helplessly as she becomes more and more emotionally unstable. He grasps for ways to support her but finds no remedy strong enough to reverse the damage that has been done.
As Lincoln's journey unfolds, Old Abe probes the relentless character and enduring spirit of America. This story portrays Lincoln not only as a flesh-and-blood man but a hero who embodies his country's finest ideals. Amid America's most devastating tragedy, Old Abe captures the challenges and triumphs, the failures and successes, of one of the most famous leaders in US history, who sets a divided country on track to become a great nation of the world.
