"This story is true. All the characters are real and were alive during the great manhunt of April 1865. Their words are authentic and come from original sources: letters, manuscripts, trial transcripts, newspapers, government reports, pamphlets, books and other documents. What happened in Washington, D.C., that spring, and in the swamps and rivers, forests and fields of Maryland and Virginia during the next twelve days, is far too incredible to have...

Tells the life stories of nineteenth-century actor Edwin Booth and his actor brother John Wilkes Booth, describing the differences between the two men, chronicling John's assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and examining the impact of John's crime on the Booth family for decades afterward.