MARY ELIZABETH SURRATT

BOOK 5

THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION SERIES

On a night meant for celebration, a single gunshot splits the air at Ford's Theatre—and Washington City clamps shut like a trap. By dawn, detectives pour into Mary Elizabeth Surratt's quiet H Street boardinghouse, turning parlor whispers into evidence and breakfast tables into witness stands. Was Mary the quiet hinge on which the plot turned—or the neatest neck to fit a noose?

From Washington's gaslit corridors—slick with soot, echoing with boot heels and the rattle of telegraph keys—to a plank-floored military courtroom ringed with bayonets, where verdicts are stamped out faster than mercy can form a prayer, this story tracks Mary's desperate struggle to keep her family from splintering while a raw, grieving nation demands a sacrifice. Neighbors avert their eyes. Friends forget the truth at the threshold and remember a different one under oath. Witnesses swear one version at dawn and another by dusk, their pockets heavy with promises and fear. Her daughter hammers on locked doors, shoves petitions beneath shutters, pleads with men who never remove their gloves. And over the prison yard the iron clock refuses to pity anyone; its hands scratch forward, each minute a footstep toward the scaffold. In that narrowing corridor of time, every breath is a wager—confess, defy, or let the rope speak for her.

Threaded with intercepted letters, sudden arrests, and testimony that shifts like sand, this novel moves from the shuddering heart of a city reeling from war to the echoing chamber where justice is hurried, soldiers keep the time, and mercy arrives too late. Whether Mary Surratt was monster or martyr, one fact cannot be argued: after Lincoln fell, someone had to hang. The question that haunts every page is why it had to be her—and who wanted it that way.