Henry and Clara (1994) by Thomas Mallon

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Henry and Clara (1994)

by Thomas Mallon

Ford's Theater, Washington DC

Washington DC: 9/12

    I have a vague memory of touring Ford's Theater, perhaps on my Junior High trip to the capital. It couldn't have been during college, when I eschewed all "touristy stuff" in favor of undergraduate ennui.  The 1,001 Novels project has this book mapped at the theater because the couple in the title- He:  A Union Army soldier returned from the just completed Civil War and She: A friend and confident of the largely friendless and confidant-less Mary Lincoln were, in fact, in the box with Lincoln and Mary when John Wikes Booth shot him, Henry also being stabbed by Booth before he(Booth) jumped out of the theater box to the stage below.

   Writing books about actual historical people is Mallon's schtick and Henry and Clara is a good choice for a chapter on books about Washington DC because the protagonist is Clara, wife of Henry, and she describes Civil War Era DC like a character out of Vanity Fair.  The reader really gets a sense of the place circa 1860 onward.   Henry and Clara is chock a block with historical detail but the plot itself: Henry's slow decline into madness after surviving the assassination attempt is hampered because Clara, like most people of that era, doesn't understand much about the process of mental illness.