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This is a lovely series, full of energy and insight.\u00a0 This installment, set during the election season of 1838 in Springfield, Illinois, follows the story of a man shot during the 4th<\/sup> of July fireworks and his subsequent trial, where his defense is taken on by Abraham Lincoln.\u00a0 The two central characters in this series are Joshua Fry Speed, known to history as Lincoln\u2019s best friend, and Lincoln himself.<\/p>\nWhy, you may say to yourself, I know all about Abraham Lincoln.\u00a0 Unless you are an historian, I assure you, you do not.\u00a0 Putnam has chosen to set his series during Lincoln\u2019s younger years, before marriage to Mary Todd, when he\u2019s living what was then a hardscrabble life as a lawyer.\u00a0 He and Speed share one bed in a rooming house; there\u2019s another bed in their room shared by two other men.<\/p>\n
Speed owns the town general store, and Putnam is expert at bringing the small prairie town to life.\u00a0 Springfield was small at the time but growing by leaps and bounds.\u00a0 As the courthouse is built, Lincoln\u2019s office is over the temporary court chambers, and juries use his office to deliberate.<\/p>\n
The feel of life at the time really comes through in Putnam\u2019s writing.\u00a0 The election \u2013 Lincoln is running for re-election to the state legislature, and his longtime rival, Stephen Douglas, for Congress is vividly portrayed, with all its scrappy violence and brutal insults.\u00a0 If you also want to know where the term \u201cstump speech\u201d comes from, or why women put candles in their windows, or how duels were usually resolved, this is the book for you.<\/p>\n
Lincoln\u2019s melancholy is also well portrayed, and as a reader you really feel for him.\u00a0 While his ne\u2019er do well father and stepbrother have turned up in this book, he\u2019s lost his mother, his sister, and his first love at this point.\u00a0 Another loss in this book plunges him into a deep depression.\u00a0 It\u2019s well known Lincoln suffered from depression, of course, but the way its illustrated here really gives you a feel for what he must have struggled with all his life.<\/p>\n
The relationship between Speed and Lincoln is also nicely portrayed.\u00a0 Speed \u00a0serves as Lincoln\u2019s investigator, as he does in this novel, and the two men search for clues to clear the man accused of the murder. The resolution was surprising, but had also been set up so well it felt right. Reading one of these books is truly an immersive experience that puts you right back in 1838.<\/p>\n
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This is a lovely series, full of energy and insight.\u00a0 This installment, set during the election season of 1838 in Springfield, Illinois, follows the story of a man shot during the 4th of July fireworks and his subsequent trial, where his defense is taken on by Abraham Lincoln.\u00a0 The two central characters in this … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-2647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2759,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/2759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}