Out of Time (Wolk)

Imagine Abraham Lincoln walking the streets of Evanston, Illinois, on Easter weekend in 1955, just a man suddenly and magically free of the terrible burden of leading the nation through war. How will the Great Emancipator react to this new world, where he finds comfort and love in the arms of a young widow? How will learning of his own death affect his efforts to end the war when he suddenly returns to the horrors of 1865? "Abraham Lincoln: A Novel Life" answers these provocative questions in a singular depiction of emotional reality and temporal fantasy that brings America's most beloved president to life as never before. Tony Wolk tells this haunting tale from the perspectives of Lincoln and three women in his real and fictional life.

It's 1964, and Abraham Lincoln's daughter, Sarah, daydreams about meeting her father. Her mother, Joan, met Lincoln nine years earlier when he was transported to Evanston, Illinois, from his own time and place for a day. When Sarah's stepfather, Will, a Lincoln scholar, doesn't return home from an overnight trip, Sarah and her mother have no way of knowing that he has traveled back in time to 1833 in the same mysterious way Lincoln came forward. The two grow more and more nervous waiting for him to come home. A stranger's phone call and the discovery of an abandoned truck will push daughter, mother, and their old dog, Rusty, away from home in search of Will.