The House of Lincoln by Nancy Horan

The House of Lincoln by Nancy Horan

Read by Sarah Welborn

10 hours, 30 minutes

Published June 2023 by Sourcebooks

Publisher's Summary: 

Nancy Horan returns with a sweeping historical novel, which tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's ascendance from rumpled lawyer to U.S. president to the Great Emancipator through the eyes of a young asylum-seeker who arrives in Lincoln's home of Springfield from Madeira, Portugal.

Showing intelligence beyond society's expectations, fourteen-year-old Ana Ferreira lands a job in the Lincoln household assisting Mary Lincoln with their boys and with the hostess duties borne by the wife of a rising political star. Ana bears witness to the evolution of Lincoln's views on equality and the Union and observes in full complexity the psyche and pain of his bold, polarizing wife, Mary.

Along with her African American friend Cal, Ana encounters the presence of the underground railroad in town and experiences personally how slavery is tearing apart her adopted country. Culminating in an eyewitness account of the little-known Springfield race riot of 1908, The House of Lincoln takes listeners on a journey through the historic changes that reshaped America and that continue to reverberate today.

My Thoughts: 

In all honesty, I didn't even read the summary of this book before I checked it out from the library. I should have. In an effort to get it "read," I chose the audiobook version. I shouldn't have. 

What Didn't Work For Me:

• Sarah Welborn's narration so grated on my nerves that I raised the speed of the audiobook to get through it sooner. For me it felt so stilted. 
• The story telling felt disjointed to me and I was unclear much of the time as to whose story this is. Is it the Lincolns, as told through Ana's eyes? If so, why didn't Horan have her travel with them to Washington? Is it the blacks and how Lincoln ended up effecting their lives? If so, why wasn't the lead character Cal? 
• Once we really got into the story of political Lincoln, the book felt like it was racing along out of control as Horan got to her ending when things slowed back down to get to the part of the story most readers will be unfamiliar with. There wasn't much new material here for me, except that ending. 

What I Liked: 

• The ending of the book and the look at the Springfield race riot of 1908. It was not only a great learning experience for me but a great reminder that the enslaved people may have been emancipated, but that didn't change the way all too many people felt about them. In fact, it may have made life worse for some as whites became fearful of what emancipation might mean for them. 
• Learning the immigrant experience of the Portuguese Protestants, through Ana's family. 
• Horan working in the Douglass/Lincoln debates which allowed for a comparison to present day politics. 

While this wasn't necessarily the book for me (although reading it in print might have helped), I do still believe that there would be a lot here for book clubs to discuss. Horan's Loving Frank was one of my book clubs reads the year it came out and it led to one of our best ever discussions. Certainly, there are a lot of readers who might not read as much (or have been raised with history ever-present, as I was) and who might find a lot to learn from this book.