Lincoln's Billy - Hardcover

Leclair, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1579624081 ISBN 13: 9781579624088

Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co, 2015

Synopsis

Abraham Lincoln trusted and confided in his law partner William "Billy" Herndon, but his still-influential 1889 biography was censored by his collaborator and publisher. In Lincoln's Billy, Tom LeClair imagines Herndon's deathbed "autobiography" and "real life" of his partner, revealing secrets about a randy and "rasslin" Lincoln on his youthful trips to New Orleans, the hidden sources of his suicidal depressions, and the untold cause of his hatred of slavery.

Based on the latest biographical research, the novel presents a vulgar tale-telling Lincoln unknown to most Americans and a radical truth-telling Herndon who was more advanced - and more contemporary - than the President on public education, women's rights and, most importantly, slavery. The abolitionist and free-thinking Billy contends with his beloved partner for sixteen years, and after the assassination, conflicts with Lincoln's family, other biographers, Christian fundamentalists, corrupt Republican politicians, robber barons and Victorian propriety as he struggles to write his unconventionally frank biography. As strong-willed as the two men are the novel's women: the ambitious, emotionally volatile and, finally, mentally ill Mary Todd Lincoln and Herndon's two wives - Mary Maxcy, an active intellectual helpmeet despite being the mother of six, and Anna Miles, a Democrat, Presbyterian and slavery sympathizer with whom Billy argues issues of the day. Like the story of Lincoln's life and autobiographies by Franklin, Douglass, and Henry Adams, Lincoln's Billy is a classic American tale of failure, resistance, persistence, and hard-won success.

The author of five novels with contemporary settings, Tom LeClair throws two vivid historical voices in Lincoln's Billy: Abe's "Kaintuck" vernacular and Billy's lawyerly rhetoric as the two attorneys duel over biographical truth and historical fictions. By the end of this novel about friendship, loyalty and betrayal, readers will wonder id they should believe Honest Abe or Trustworthy Billy.

About this title

About the Author:

Tom LeClair has published three books of criticism and has reviewed fiction for the New York Times Book Review, the Barnes and Noble Review, the Daily Beast, Bookforum, the Nation, Atlantic, American Book Review, and many other national periodicals. In 2005 he was a judge for the National Book Award for fiction. He lives in Brooklyn.

Review:

"In LeClair's novel, Abraham Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, wants to "provide a naturalistic and profound analysis of how different traits combine to form a complex individual" when he writes the great man's biography. The narrative is easily followed, with Lincoln rendered as a man in full, especially as Herndon relates the intimate details Lincoln's family and relationships. Herndon is a sympathetic though flawed observer, intent on truth-telling. LeClair's Herndon struggles through his own failures to reveal the enigma that was Lincoln. Herndon's an interesting fellow, but Abraham Lincoln is the book's star." --Kirkus

"Billy Herndon is one of the great riddles of Lincoln scholarship, almost impossible to unravel. He's as mysterious as Lincoln's long silences and profoundly sad face. Yet Tom LeClair manages to give us the first intimate portrait of Herndon in Lincoln's Billy, a novel written with tenderness, irascibility, and real grace. This book reads like poetry disguised as sandpaper."--Jerome Charyn author of I am Abraham

"The man who tells his own sad tale as "Lincoln's Billy" is William Herndon. Not that much has ever been revealed about Billy, who remains in Lincoln's shadow, though he was Lincoln's first and very best biographer. He failed to publish an unexpurgated biography of Lincoln, so Tom LeClair has stepped in to write this bawdy expose of young Lincoln, a tough sinewy novel about the very nature of narrative voice." --The Daily Beast

"Tom LeClair's novel has an authentic southern flavor, smoothly blending Herndon's literary prose with Lincoln's "Kaintuck" forthrightness. Its tales are neatly woven through the narrative, like facts through fable, at pleasingly natural intervals. And if truth today is a debatable commodity, there's something truly satisfying about this novel's portrayal of debatable truths in the past. This is a truly absorbing novel of true fiction that sees our Lincoln large as life." --Sheila's Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1579624081
• ISBN 13: 9781579624088
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176