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Booth

Booth

Current price: $30.00
Publication Date: March 29th, 2022
Publisher:
Random House Large Print
ISBN:
9780593556498
Pages:
656

The Booth family dominated 19th century American stages, but are known for the despicable actions of John Wilkes. Their saga, told by Karen Joy Fowler, mirrors the disintegration of their society and offers a cautionary tale for ours.

Bill Cusumano , Square Books, Oxford, MS
March 2022 Indie Next List

The Booths were a bohemian family of highly literate, strongly anti-slavery Shakespearean actors. So how did John Wilkes become a pro-slavery, pro-secessionist terrorist? Fowler’s portrait of an American family is riveting.

Chantel McCray, Rainy Day Books, Fairway, KS
Spring 2023 Reading Group Indie Next List

Description

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.

About the Author

Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which was the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.