Assassin - Softcover

Myers, Anna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802796435 ISBN 13: 9780802796431

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens, 2007

Synopsis

Bella isn't evil. But even people with good intentions can end up doing bad things. Especially when they meet people with the power to persuade them to do almost anything, like John Wilkes Booth-the most charismatic and famous actor of his time.

So when Booth sets his sights on Bella, an assistant seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln, to help with his plot to kidnap President Lincoln, he is able to persuade her to betray her president and even turn her back on the boy she has loved her entire life. Bella believes Booth is only trying to force the North to release Southern war prisoners, and will not harm her dear friend Mr. Lincoln. But the kidnapping plot fails, and now Booth will stop at nothing--even if it means harming Bella in the process.
Anna Myers has crafted a provocative new look at the Lincoln assassination through the eyes of both a young White House insider and the assassin himself. An author's note provides the historical background to this tragic event.

About this title

About the Author

Anna Myers is the author of more than one dozen books for Walker & Company, including Tulsa Burning, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and Flying Blind, an Oklahoma Book Award finalist. Anna lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

From Booklist

In alternating chapters of first-person narrative, Myers novel tells of Bella and an actor she idolizes, John Wilkes Booth. After her mother's death, eight-year-old Bella goes to live in Washington City with her grandmother, a seamstress at the White House. Over the next six years, Bella attends school, develops one close friendship, learns to sew, takes her grandmother's position at the White House, moonlights in the costume shop at Ford's Theatre, and is befriended by Booth, eight years her senior. Meanwhile, Booth travels to Charleston for the hanging of John Brown, finds success on the stage, suffers through the election and later the reelection of Lincoln, and develops alliances that he hopes will be useful as he plots against the president he despises. Myers has taken on an ambitious project, given the novel's dual-narrator structure, its lengthy time frame, and the burden of conforming to the main facts regarding historical figures and events. One of the greatest difficulties is writing convincingly from both an adult's and child's point of view, but she carries off the project credibly. Suggest this to readers who enjoyed Gary Blackwood's Second Sight (2005); readers wanting more facts may want to try James Cross Giblin's excellent Good Brother, Bad Brother: The Story of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth (2005). Carolyn Phelan
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0802796435
• ISBN 13: 9780802796431
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212