The Fictional Abraham Lincoln

            Most readers of non-fiction are aware of Abraham Lincoln’s life and accomplishments. However, they may not be aware that he also is the subject of many novels. Here are some recent ones.

            In Perish from the Earth: A Lincoln and Speed Mystery, written by Jonathan F. Putnam, the newly minted trial lawyer and his friend Joshua Speed, the son of a steamboat owner, defend a young traveling artist wrongly accused of a murder linked to a rigged card game.

Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel, written by George Saunders, traces a night of solitary mourning and reflection as experienced by the sixteenth president after the death of his eleven-year-old son at the dawn of the Civil War.

In Murder in the Lincoln White House, written by C.M. Gleason, when a man is found stabbed to death only yards away from Abraham Lincoln during the inaugural ball, the president dispatches his assistant, and former frontier scout, Adam Quinn, to investigate.

            A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, written by Stephen Harrigan, depicts Abraham Lincoln in his twenties and thirties, as he works as a lawyer and in the state legislature and spends time with a fictional poet, Cage Weatherby.