Nineteen year old Abraham Lincoln has, unknown to himself, been living in present day Chicago. Alan (Ruby) Gentry, an agent for TEMPUS, an obscure government agency, brought him here in a time machine because he was about to die. Now, after Lincoln learns he is in the future, he is transported back 1828. Gentry visits him again in 1860, the night he is elected president. Then, as Gentry attempts to return to the present, he is accidentally stranded in Chicago in 1867. He makes a life there for many years, until he is caught in the Great Fire of 1871.
