The author of The Gates of the Alamo now gives us a galvanizing portrait of Abraham Lincoln during his Springfield years, when he risked both his sanity and his ethical bearings as he searched for the great destiny he believed to be his. It is Illinois in the 1830s and 1840s. Abraham Lincoln is a circuit-riding lawyer, a member of the state legislature, a man of almost ungovernable ambition. To his friends he is also a beloved figure, by turns charmingly awkward and mesmerizingly self-possessed--a man of whom they expect big things. Among those friends are Joshua Speed, William Herndon, Stephen Douglas, and a fictional poet, Cage Weatherby, through whom we will come to know Lincoln in his twenties and early thirties. Cage both admires and clashes with Lincoln, often questioning his legal ethics.
