“The Second Life of John Wilkes Booth.” Barnaby Conrad

[groovedaddy]

CARPINTERIA, Calif. — The last time Barnaby Conrad saw Sinclair Lewis, three years after he served as Lewis’s personal secretary, they were at a bar in Paris and, by Mr. Conrad’s account, Lewis was thoroughly drunk. But not so drunk that he couldn’t chastise his former secretary for failing to execute a book idea that Lewis had handed him one morning at breakfast: a novel based on the conceit that John Wilkes Booth had escaped capture after assassinating Lincoln and had embarked on a secret life in the American frontier.

“You are never going to be a writer unless you write that book,” declared Lewis, the Nobel Prize-winning author of “Elmer Gantry” and “Babbitt,” as Mr. Conrad recounted the moment recently. Talk about pressure. “It was always on my mind,” he said.

That was 1950, shortly before Lewis’s death. And now, 60 years later — this must set a record for late authors — Mr. Conrad has published “The Second Life of John Wilkes Booth.” The novel follows the arc of the story Lewis sketched out: from Booth’s escape from the barn where history has him cornered and killed by Union soldiers, to a frontier town where, after being goaded into playing Lincoln at a county pageant, he was assassinated by a drunken fellow Lincoln hater.

The conversation in the bar was no idle talk. Lewis and Mr. Conrad had signed a contract dated Aug. 7, 1947, stipulating that upon publication Lewis would collect 30 percent of the earnings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/books/27conrad.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28

[The Roux Comes First]

1. Thanks for Link to That Booth Article

Especially interesting and timely because I savored Swanson's "Manhunt" last month:

[AngryOldDem]

2. That is a really excellent book. Highly recommend it.

The contract is reprinted at the back of the novel.

Very, very plausible plotline.