In conversation with Mary Calvi, moderated by Mary Lynn Becza
12:10 – 10:00 at St. Peter’s Parish Hall
About the author
Nancy Horan is the author of Loving Frank, which remained on the New York Times Best Sellers list for over a year, was translated into sixteen languages, and received the 2009 Prize for Historical Fiction awarded by the Society of American Historians. Horan also authored the Today Show Book Club Pick, Under the Wide and Starry Sky and The House of Lincoln. A native Midwesterner, Nancy Horan was a teacher and journalist before turning to fiction writing. She lived for 25 years in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where she raised her two sons. She now lives with her husband on an island in Puget Sound.
MFOB featured book: The House of Lincoln
The House of Lincoln tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s ascendance from rumpled lawyer to U.S. President to the Great Emancipator. The narrative is told through the eyes of a young asylum-seeker who arrives in Lincoln’s home of Springfield, Illinois from Madeira, Portugal by way of Trinidad. Showing intelligence beyond society’s expectations, Ana Gomes is given a job in the Lincoln household assisting Mary Lincoln with their boys and begins a lifelong relationship based on mutual admiration. Through her experiences in their home, Ana bears witness to the evolution of Lincoln’s views on equality and The Union and observes in full complexity the psyche and pain of his bold, polarizing wife, Mary. The House of Lincoln deftly addresses the roots of racism, colorism, and classism in America culminating in an eye-witness account of the Springfield race riot of 1908. With themes that resonate today, this novel celebrates the bravery of the conductors on the Underground Railroad and is a pointed reminder that hate never really goes away but neither does hope.
