booth

2022 Booker Prize shortlist

From the bestselling author and Man Booker Prize finalist, All Beside Ourselves, comes an epic and intimate novel about the family behind one of the most notorious figures in American history: John Wilkes Booth.

In 1822, a secretive family moves to a secret cabin about thirty miles northeast of Baltimore to farm, hide, and raise ten children over sixteen years. Junius Booth—the family breadwinner, a celebrated Shakespearean actor, and the master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a captivating talent and a man of terrifying dislocation. The children arrive one by one, year by year, as the country edges ever more frighteningly close to the brink of secession and civil war. As the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to establish themselves as one of the nation's foremost theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many theaters where they have starred, multiple scandals, familial triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to claim their lives, and the dignified siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to confront the truth behind the devastating false promise of an early prophecy. Booth delivers a stunning portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the bonds that make and break a family.