Parts of this book, particularly the dialogue, waver between lurid and absurd, but that’s because it’s true: Swanson uses the real words that real people,hunters and hunted,spoke in the weeks before and after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
He also embellishes and expands on what we know, as when he offers the very thoughts of the assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
But we don’t mind. Truth is not only stranger than fiction,it can be both gripping and the product of original research, as it is here.
If there’s also a dollop of Booth obsession for zest, OK,books about all things Lincoln always are in favor.
This particular best seller now out in paperback, and the early stages of a filmed version, besets us like the rest, feasting on fascination: Why did Booth kill Lincoln? What if he’d escaped? How was he caught?
Swanson focuses on the army’s pursuit of Booth after shooting Lincoln.
The president dies. What becomes of his assassin?
The answer includes a multistate hunt, hiding out, rowboats at night, burning barns, a betrayal, a well-aimed shot, claims of patriotism and madness, and well, it’s the stuff of legend.
Such are the facts,mundane, maddening, mesmerizing,of this book.
And far from abating, books like these are likely to spread.
Not only are these events in themselves legendary and mysterious, not only does this book clench your attention, but 2009 fast approaches.
It’s the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.
,Paul Hughes
