Destiny of the Republic

Paul Michael effectively maintains the thread of a narrative history that is by nature digressive. Candice Millard's excellent account of the 1881 shooting of President James Garfield, barely three months into his presidency, details what is generally a footnote in American history. But Garfield's murder was also the intersection of a number of emerging social and technological forces and is one of American history's great what-if's. Narrator Michael brings a steady tone to a text that has license to roam the tangled history of Reconstruction, the Chicago fire, and the career of Alexander Graham Bell. In its hardcover reviews this novel was criticized for being uneven and disproportionate. Those qualities vanish here, and Michael's empathetic delivery finds a steady course for Millard's many-channeled story. D.A.W. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine