Cheri's Reviews > Booth

3.5 Stars

This is a somewhat fictionalized story centered around one of the most infamous figures in America: John Wilkes Booth. Most of us know of him, from history class somewhere along the line. Infamous for being responsible for the death of Abraham Lincoln.

So many others have written reviews for this story, so I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of the story. But I will tell you why I wanted to read it - despite it being a long and winding road of a novel, one that meanders through this story with over four hundred pages.

Many years ago, not long after my father had passed away, my mother was going through some things she’d had since she was still a young, single woman and asked me to help her figure out what things to keep and what to toss. In the process, I came across an old photo album of hers filled with old black & white photos and came across a photo that was of several people in a boat, wearing very old-fashioned swimwear, with a relatively young woman being the only one standing. Since I had no idea who most of the people were, the exception being one man who I recognized as one of my mother’s uncles, I asked her who this young woman in the photo was. She nonchalantly said her name was Jane Booth, as in the grand-daughter (or great-grand-daughter, perhaps) of John Wilkes Booth, married to my mother’s favourite uncle. I wanted to read this since I’d thought about this family off and on after this book came out. Mainly, how the actions of one member of a family, in this case John Wilkes Booth, can impact more than just that one person, and in this case, I can’t imagine how difficult it was for the other members of the family in the years that followed.

An unexceptional story, aside from the history of this event, but I kept reading because I was hoping for more, something that would make me excited to continue reading this, although I did finish reading this, but it was, for me, unexceptional.