Within this transitional state called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo, a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel and enact bizarre acts of penance. In his long-awaited first novel, George Saunders delivers a moving and original story that features none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgetta. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.įrom that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic historical framework into a thrilling supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other, for no one but Saunders could conceive it.įebruary 1862. In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent and moving work yet.
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