Abe Lincoln and Joshua Speed Star in Perish From the Earth

When I saw that Doris Kearns Goodwin enjoyed Jonathan F. Putman's first Lincoln and Speed mystery novel, I decided to request the second in the series, Perish From the Earth. The idea of a mystery involving circuit court lawyer Abe Lincoln and his bunkmate Joshua Speed intrigued me.

The action takes place in St. Louis in 1837, at a time when Abolitionists were considered radical lawbreakers.


Joshua Speed, our narrator, accepts slavery although he is disturbed by scenes of abuse. Abe supports it as constitutional but hopes that it will be phased out over time.

1837 saw the inauguration of Martin Van Buren and the Panic of 1837, a financial crisis. Oberlin College became the first in the nation to accept female students. (Michigan also became a state!)

Speed is on the War Princess, a Mississippi paddleboat owned by his father, investigating why it has not been a profitable venture. While he is on board, a man goes missing and his body is afterward found by Speed and Lincoln. A rival in love, the artist George Bingham, is accused of his murder and Lincoln agrees to represent him in court.

As Speed and his intrepid sister Martha investigate, the reader learns about American society at the time: slavery, plantation life, abolition, the newfangled justice and prison system, and life on a paddleboat.

Events and persons are based in history. A mob murders an abolitionist newspaperman, based on the real Elijah Lovejoy. Other characters drawn from history include the gambler Devon, George Bingham, and persons in the legal system. Likewise taken from history is the prison in Alton. Robert E. Lee shows up, managing a project for the War Department's Engineering Corps.

Lincoln had a deep commitment to the law and an abhorrence of mob rule. We see Lincoln as a trial lawyer, employing his gift of storytelling and turning his failures into successes.

I liked the characters and enjoyed the vivid descriptions that brought the historical time period to life. Everything felt probable and in keeping with what we know of Lincoln. This was an enjoyable read.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Jonathan F. Putnam is a writer and attorney. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he is a nationally renowned trial lawyer and avid amateur Lincoln scholar. He currently lives with his family in London, England. This is his second Lincoln and Speed mystery following These Honored Dead.

Perish from the Earth: A Lincoln and Speed Mystery
Jonathan F. Putnam
Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: July 11, 2017
$25.99 hardcover
ISBN: 9781683311393

Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed, Retelling Shakespeare's The Tempest

Margaret Atwood's bestselling novel Hag-Seed is now out in paperback. It is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, in which contemporary novelists reimagine the classic plays for a new age.

The brilliant, original, artistic director Felix was about to direct The Tempest when he was disposed from his job by self-seeking men. He retreats to an isolated primitive cabin, his only companion his sensing of the presence of his deceased daughter Miranda.

After many years he takes a job under a false name and becomes Mr. Duke, literacy teacher in a local prison, teaching inmates Shakespeare through performance of the plays.

When Felix learns his old enemies are now Ministers who want to end the prison literacy program he decides the time has come for him to take his revenge. The Ministers come to the prison to see a video of The Tempest performed by the inmates. But Felix and his prisoner actors plot a live theater experience that will bring his enemies under his power.

I loved the play within a play structure, so Shakespearean. The intricate structure of the novel knocked my socks off.

The prisoners become essential characters. Hag-Seed, a Shakespearean curse, is their name for Caliban, and the actor playing Caliban writes his own lines:

My name's Caliban, got scales and long nails,I smell like a fish and not a man--But my other name's Hag-Seed, or that what he call me;He call me a lotta names, he play me a lotta games:He call me a poison, a filth, a slave,He prison me up to make me behave,But I'm Hag-Seed!

"The last three words in the play are 'set me free'," says Felix." Felix has identified nine prisons within the play, and so we understand how Atwood conceived of Hag-Seed.

I received a free book through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Hag-Seed
Margaret Atwood
Hogarth Shakespeare
$15 paperback
ISBN: 978-0-8041-4131-4

Devastatingly Beautiful, Devastatingly Sad: Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

"In Emily Ruskovich's wizardly vision, Idaho is both a place and an emotional dimension. Haunted, haunting, her novel winds through time, braiding events and their consequences in the most unexpected and moving ways." -Andrea Barrett

If my Goodreads friends reviews were not enough, this comment by Andrea Barrett--whose books I enjoy--was the clincher, motivating my interest in reading it. When I finished Idaho I learned that Ruskovich had studied writing with two of my favorite writers, Marilynne Robinson and Ethan Canin.

The novel is a complicated, slow moving, intense story, delving into characters linked by love and horrific tragedy. The writing is gorgeous with no stock cliches. This is not a fast plot-driven read. It is not a happy story full of joy. It is about how people carry on living in the midst of pain.

Young marrieds Wade and Jenny had left the prairie to live on a mountain in Idaho, discovering later how isolated they were. They build a home from scratch, saved up for a plow so they could keep open the road going down the mountain in winter. They have two daughters and are happy.

Then Jenny killed their daughter May, for no apparent reason, in a thoughtless act. Wade hid their other daughter June in the forest to keep her safe, but when he returned for her she was gone, never to be found. Jenny is convicted to life in prison; she would have preferred death but remarked she should never again receive anything she wanted.

Early onset Alzheimer's disease runs in Wade's family; it caused his father's death when he wandered out and became lost in the snow. That does not stop school teacher Ann from falling in love with Wade and offering herself to be his caretaker. Wade has moments of clarity without memory, wanders off as his father did, and at times becomes dangerously violent. Wade has lost his daughters and memory of that loss, but the heartbreak of loss remains.

Ann once observed May giving a knife, made by Wade, to an older boy. She becomes obsessed with Wade's daughters and wife, the mystery of June's disappearance. The girls haunt the mountain and their home. Ann is also painfully aware of Jenny in prison.

Jenny's early self-destructive desire resolved into accepting her punishment as just. She finds the pain of scrubbing floors a soothing mortification. Without contact from the world, isolated within the prison of her own making, Jenny seeks nothing more from life. Until she decides to help her cellmate who has been banned from education classes; Jenny attends the classes, takes notes, and gives them to Elizabeth. Their friendship grows.

The story's ending is astonishing and moving and we discover Ann's power of love is truly redemptive.

Ruskovich joins the league of impressive first time published authors in 2016.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Idaho
Emily Ruckovich
Random House
Publication Date: January 3, 2017
$27 hard bound
ISBN: 9780812994049