Category: History Publisher: Nottingham Publishing
ISBN-10: 1580060218
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 212
Copyright: Feb 12 1999
This book retells in dramatic form another version of the Booth saga, one carried down through the family's oral history. Based on award-winning research, this work will tantalize the reader with insights and details known only to the immediate family and a few scholars, offering a new perspective on this crucial moment in American history. Evidence is provided which reveals that powerful friends assisted Booth to escape to Asia where he wandered the earth, a ghost of a man wracked by despair and guilt, before returning to his country in later life. Rare family photos and dramatic anecdotes add an atmosphere of mystery to this epic tragedy.
PREFACE (excerpt) On the night of April 14, 1865 a gunshot from a small derringer interrupted the laughter at Ford's Theater and forever changed American history. Hardly a week after the Confederacy's surrender at Appomatox, with Washington lavishly decorated to celebrate the end of the bloody Civil War, Abraham Lincoln slumped down in his chair never to regain consciousness. The assassin leaped onto the stage crying out "Sic Semper Tyrannis" -- "Thus always to tyrants." He was recognized immediately. Everyone in the theater knew him. Most had admired his charismatic presence on stage and hailed him as the finest actor of the era. A dozen members of the audience had chatted with him that very day. At twenty-six years of age, John Wilkes Booth, son of the great tragedian Junius Brutus Booth and brother to Edwin, America's most acclaimed Hamlet, was the toast of Washington. His theatrical triumphs followed him from Richmond to Boston and his future was assured as a brilliant and beloved star. But in one terrible instant, it all vanished. Why did he throw his destiny away? Who was he behind the handsome face and winsome persona? What forces were at work at his side, opening the way for his entrance into the President's private boxseat and cutting the telegraph wires between the capital and surrounding army posts? Did his story really end at the burning farmhouse? What happened to the lives of those who loved him? Our history books have been silent over mysteries kept hidden for generations. But strange tales have come down to us through the friends and family of John Wilkes Booth that have yet to be told. Tales of secret societies, escape to foreign lands, children fathered after the father's presumed death...And the shadow of a curse, one recognized by Booth himself while on the run in the swamps near the Potomac. "Behold, Thou has driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from Thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth." This ancient curse is strangely fitting to Booth's destiny as a result of his terrible deed. It may even have become a greater retribution than the accepted historical theory that his life was ended by a soldier's bullet. But the impact of his terrible deed also reverberated down through the generations, overshadowing the lives of his descendants. I am one of them, his great-grandson thrice removed.
Professional Reviews
The Curse of Cain
My congratulations go to Theodore J. Nottingham on accomplishing what few authors achieve -- captiviating and engaging my mind to such an extent I was unable to stop reading his book. "The Curse of Cain" gives readers a dramatic yet factual look at what occured in the mind of John Wilkes Booth in the days, weeks, and years following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. As this man makes his way through life, his thoughts run wild with moral issues. Booth's third-great grandson does a wonderful job telling the story, with both a dramatic and factual approach. A must-read for any history fan.
Michael J. Downey
325 letters my father wrote to my mother during his time in World War II.
Woven together in a timeline of events of three of his brothers, 5 brothers-in-law, and one cousin, all 10 of them were in WWII at the same time.
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