The House of Lincoln

April 3, 2023
This pallid historical from Horan (Under the Wide and Starry Sky) surveys Abraham Lincoln’s life from the perspective of Portuguese immigrant Ana Ferreira, who spent years serving in the Lincoln family’s home in Springfield, Ill. In 1854, Mary Lincoln hires 12-year-old Ana to assist with housework and child care. Horan rushes through the years as Ana grows up around the Lincoln family, watching Abe run unsuccessfully for the Senate before eventually being elected president. Along the way, Ana falls for a reporter assigned to cover the politician. Much of the narrative covers familiar ground including Lincoln’s assassination and its aftermath, though Horan offers something original in a later section chronicling a historical 1908 riot in Springfield, which targeted the city’s Black citizens. Still, the lackluster retreading of familiar terrain and clunky writing are tough to get past (on Mary Todd’s half sister: “like the South itself, Emelie had made her own bed, and now she had to lie in it”). This one’s for Lincoln obsessives only. Agent: Lisa Bankofff, Bankoff Collective.

April 15, 2023
Horan explores the worlds of Abraham Lincoln and the United States before, during, and after the Civil War through the eyes of an immigrant girl who becomes entwined with the soon-to-be-president's family. Ana Ferreira's family, who are Presbyterians, flee religious persecution in Catholic Portugal in the mid-1800s, arriving in Springfield, Illinois, as tensions are rising between the North and South. Fourteen-year-old Ana secures a job in the Lincoln household, helping Mary Todd Lincoln with the household duties as her husband's political power grows. The novel charts the experiences of Ana; her Black friend, Cal, whom she met at the street market where her mother is a vendor; and other characters in the period covering Lincoln's election, the Civil War, the president's assassination, Mary Lincoln's death, and into the 20th century. While it's interesting to witness the evolution of Lincoln's views on slavery, the book's greatest strength is its unexpected examination of racism in central Illinois, a state long associated with both the Underground Railroad and the Union. Beginning with Ana's discovery that the Donnegan brothers, two free Black men, are part of the Underground Railroad and continuing through the violence of the 1908 Springfield race riot, Horan explores the often racist history of the state, including the power of the Ku Klux Klan and other White supremacist groups and the codification of legislation barring formerly enslaved people from settling there. This complicated narrative is far more engaging and less familiar than the Lincolns' story, and the shifts in focus between the two threads don't always work. But nonetheless, Horan has succeeded in illuminating an underconsidered segment of American history. By adding nuance to the history of Illinois in the years surrounding the Civil War, Horan foregrounds the era's complexity.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2023
This book isn't as much about Lincoln's path to the White House and through the Civil War as it is about the way it affected his home of Springfield, Illinois, told from the perspectives of three people connected to him. The fictional Ana Ferreira, an immigrant from Portugal whose family came seeking religious freedom, works for the Lincoln family. Spencer Donnegan was a preacher and Lincoln's barber, whose freeborn family assisted runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad. The third perspective is that of Mary Todd Lincoln, voicing the sadness that came alongside the family's successes. Horan depicts the town as a microcosm of the ongoing struggle for racial equality, from stricter laws in the 1850s that prohibited Black people from settling in Illinois to the 1908 Springfield race riot that spurred the formation of the NAACP. The strong sense of place is enhanced by sympathetic characters who, to the end, embody hope and determination. This is a compelling reminder that events of the past are indelibly connected to attitudes that persist today.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 16, 2023

The Confederacy surrendered in 1865, but this historical novel from Horan (Under the Wide and Starry Sky; Loving Frank) proves that the Civil War has not yet ended. The author's previous works delved into the lives of two Americans, while this novel stretches across a wide spectrum of United States history from 1851 to 1909. Through the eyes of two 11-year-old girls--Ana, who's white, and Cal, who's Black--Horan tracks life in Springfield, IL, as Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln take up their White House destiny. Ana (whose family fled persecution in Portugal) and Cal (whose aunt hides from the gangs hunting freedom-seeking enslaved peopled in Kentucky) both work in the Lincoln household and eventually move on. The book is studded with cameos of historic characters like Mary Todd Lincoln's sisters, but the more rousing emotions are conveyed piercingly through Cal and Ana and the people who love them. Anguish in the racial conflicts, tragedy in the casualties of the battlefield, budding romances--all come through with touching grace and empathy. Closing with the horrendous Springfield Riot of 1908 that reopened the wounds from the Civil War, the narrative's end offers a grim foreshadowing of the racial strife of the 20th century. VERDICT Meticulously researched, brilliantly paced, and written for most levels of readers, this is the historical fiction genre at its very best.--Barbara Conaty

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