Book summary

Byrd, who has written novels about Jackson, Jefferson, and other American presidents, begins this time at the end of Ulysses S. Grant's second term. The events are seen through the eyes of a young newspaper reporter, a Civil War veteran who is in love with a senator's wife and who becomes part of the circle surrounding Henry Adams and his doomed, beautiful wife, Clover. He goes on to chronicle the last days of Grant, when he is dying of throat cancer and desperately trying to write his memoirs.

Media reviews

"[A]n impressively complex work of historical fiction."