Canavan, Kathryn

Readers in the Philadelphia area will likely be most interested, though general audiences will appreciate how Canavan uses historic images to create a vivid sense of setting.

Canavan's approach brings readers close to the immediate actions, but, in the end, she cheats her subject by forgoing much historical analysis or any attempt to connect her work with the abundance of literature on the assassination, or even to assay the larger conspiracy that Booth and others hatched. The result is a book that is a "good read" but not one that will much change what we already know.