"Booth" by Karen Joy Fowler

Welcome! Ours is a chill group filled with good people, good books, and good drinks. Did you read the whole book? Amazing! Did you only read some of it? Totally fine, please still join us (just be warned, there will be spoilers)! Did you hear about this the day before and didn't read it at all? You're always welcome—and bring a recommendation with you!

At the end of our time, we'll go around the circle and share our recommendations and decide which wins out for our October read.

• • •

Fiction | Historical | American Civil War Era | Biographical & Autofiction

• • •

In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.

As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country’s leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy.

Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.

***pasted from thenookcf.com: https://tinyurl.com/2z8dyhyd
Also available on ThriftBooks: https://tinyurl.com/2eh3up3j

CONTENT WARNINGS: https://tinyurl.com/5cu52s8e

Also check out other Workshops in Waterloo, Arts events in Waterloo, Theatre events in Waterloo.