Mr. Lincoln's Wars - A Novel in Thirteen Stories **1/2

Written by Adam Braver.
Copyright 2003.
Published by Harper Collins Publishers.
Pages 303.

The title is deceiving because I really would not call this book a novel. Like the subtitle says, its a book of stories, that happened to be themed around Lincoln and the Civil War.

The stories are not typical fictional war stories about bravery and such. They are not typical fictional stories about politicians. The stories are gritty, as a Civil War story should be, but in a more modernist kind of way. The stories get into the feelings of the characters. Such as when Lincoln visited the aftermath of a battle fields or when his wife Mary Todd, visited a soldiers hospital.

In some way the stories are almost so real and yet at the same time they seem so fantastical. I mean here's a Civil War book with actual sex scenes. True, one is about a woman raped by her no-account husband. She then gets off when she has sex with the soldier who delivers the news of her husband's death. She pleads with the young soldier to give details about his death, and the gorier the details, the more aroused she becomes. This is certainly not typical of 19th century sensuality. There's a another sex scene, much more tender and conventional in some ways except for the fact that it happens to be with Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Boothe.

On the more fantastical side, in one story, an elderly father who is partially senile, tries to find Lincoln ,because Lincoln wrote him a letter explaining the death of the father's son. Of course it was a form letter, so when he presents the actual letter to Lincoln (who happens to be sitting alone on a park bench after one of his speeches - weird right? What president would be left on his own, even in those days), Lincoln feels sorry for not actually being the author of the letter. Lincoln tells the father about the death of his own son and the two men bond as they share the common loss of losing beloved sons.

I liked this book. The author gives some twists on what we know about history and makes it more personal as well as more poetic and mysterious. Lincoln's sadness, in contrast to his accomplishments and legend, is a mysterious thing in itself.