Customer Reviews

A Court for Owls

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I wouldn't describe myself as a devotee of the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln, but I have read a fair number of nonfiction books on the topic, and in one of them I was arrested by a photograph of Lewis Powell (alias "Paine"), as he appeared on the military ship after his capture. Described in more than one book as a "muscular giant" who was a muscle-headed tool of John Wilkes Booth, he was also, as his photograph shows, a true physical beauty, and I was struck by the waste, knowing he would die on the gallows before he was twenty-one. So I began to look for more about him, and there isn't much. This novel is the only fiction treatment of his life I have found, and I would describe it as not bad, though not fully successful. The author doesn't shy from depicting Powell's documented brutality and unpredictable temper, though he also shows him as tender and capable of love, not the robotlike sociopath that the Powell of history seems to have been. His depiction of Booth is less satisfactory; I haven't read a single novel that managed to capture in any degree the spell Booth cast over those in his orbit, and this novel is no better than any other in that regard. But the author's portrait of Powell has its moments; the final passage, as Powell's mother recalls him as a baby, is poignant. At least for history buffs with a particular interest in the Lincoln conspiracy, this novel is worth a read.