Longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
Ulysses S Grant reflects on the crucial moments of his life as a husband a father a general and a president while writing his memoirs and reckoning with his complicated legacy in this epic and intimate work of superb historical fiction Booklist starred review
Barely able to walk and rendered mute by the cancer metastasizing in his throat Ulysses S Grant is scratching out words hour after hour day after day Desperate to complete his memoirs before his death so his family might have some financial security and he some redemption Grant journeys back in time
He had once been the savior of the Union the general to whom Lee surrendered at Appomattox a twiceelected president who fought for the civil rights of Black Americans and against the rising Ku Klux Klan a plain farmerturnedbusiness magnate who lost everything to a Wall Street swindler a devoted husband to his wife Julia and a loving father to four children In this gorgeously rendered and moving novel Grant rises from the page in all of his contradictions and foibles his failures and triumphs
Moving from bloodstained battlefields to Gilded Age New York the novel explores how Grants own views on race and Reconstruction changed over time A graceful moving narrative Kirkus Reviews starred review from historical fiction master Jon Clinch this evocatively crafted novel breathes fresh life into an American icon
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