Overview

"In the 1820s, two families, unknown to each other, worked on farms in the American wilderness. It seemed unlikely that the families would ever meet--and yet, they did. The son of one family, the famed actor John Wilkes Booth, killed the son of the other, President Abraham Lincoln, in the most significant assassination in American history. The murder, however, did not come without warning--in fact, it had been foretold. In the Houses of Their Dead is the first book of the many thousands written about Lincoln to focus on the president's fascination with Spiritualism and to demonstrate how it linked him, uncannily, to the man who would kill him. Abraham Lincoln is usually seen as a rational, empirically-minded man; yet as biographer Terry Alford reveals, he was also deeply superstitious and drawn to the irrational. Like millions of other Americans, including the Booths, Lincoln, and his wife, Mary, suffered repeated personal tragedies and turned for solace to Spiritualism, a new practice sweeping the nation that held that the dead were nearby and could be contacted by the living. Remarkably, the Lincolns and the Booths even used the same mediums, including Charles Colchester, a specialist in ""blood writing,"" whom Mary first brought to her husband and who warned the president after listening to the ravings of another of his clients, John Wilkes Booth."

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Alford lays all of the eerie connections out in detailed but never-dry prose, providing an astonishing story with enough historical context to make it both understandable and, simultaneously, incredible. -- Amazon.com Alford's slim, meticulously referenced account, teased from the footnotes of history, is a page-turning pleasure. -- New York Times Book Review

"""Alford lays all of the eerie connections out in detailed but never-dry prose, providing an astonishing story with enough historical context to make it both understandable and, simultaneously, incredible."" -- ""Amazon.com"" ""Alford's slim, meticulously referenced account, teased from the footnotes of history, is a page-turning pleasure."" -- ""New York Times Book Review"""

Author Information

Terry Alford is an author, historian, and professor emeritus at Northern Virginia Community College. He is the author of Fortune's Fool, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, among other books. A classically trained actor, director, and teacher with many regional Shakespeare plays to his credit, Danny Campbell has narrated over 150 titles and directed at least that many. He is a multiple AudioFile Earphones Award winner and was named one of AudioFile's Best of the Year 2017.

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