Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body.įrom that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle.
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