Dead Presidents
By Brady Carlson. (W.W. Norton, 336 pages, $26.95.)
The life stories of the 43 men who have been president of the United States are fascinating and well known, mostly. (Of course, it depends on the president; there's Lincoln, and then there's the Trivial Pursuit question no one gets, William Henry Harrison.) But fewer of us know what became of them after they died. Fortunately we have Brady Carlson to plug that gap in White House lore with this colorful, compulsively readable account of his travels across the country to presidential graves and memorials.
Carlson, a reporter and show host for New Hampshire Public Radio, groups the presidents not in order but by theme: Which were killed by incompetent doctors? Which took long postmortem journeys to their final resting place? Which got the largest monuments (the four on Mount Rushmore win going away) and the smallest (Calvin Coolidge's tombstone is no bigger than anyone else's in his quiet Vermont cemetery)? How did Rutherford B. Hayes, of all people, get the first presidential library? Two presidents merit chapters of their own: George Washington, who set the pace (as in all things presidential) for memorializing dead chief executives, and John F. Kennedy, whose so-called eternal flame has been snuffed out (once by holy water) any number of times since it was first lit in 1963. With five presidents currently living — and another to be elected this year — "Dead Presidents" will make you curious about how they, too, might live on in the nation's memory after they go.
Kevin Duchschere, metro team leader
The Taxidermist's Daughter
By Kate Mosse. (William Morrow, 412 pages, $26.99.)
Across the windswept marshes and sodden fields of a coastal village in England, old men gather at a churchyard for a superstitious ritual that sets a dark tale in motion. It's 1912, and the sophistication of the new century has all but banished foolish rites like the one that has drawn these men together.
Watching this forbidden scene from a distance, a reclusive young woman, Connie Gifford, glimpses a shadowy figure that appears strange and out of place. She has followed her aging father, once a proud tradesman but now a remorseful town drunk, to this place to try to make sense of his recent ramblings. But the sight of this stranger, and the events of this night and the days that follow, instead stir buried memories of Connie's past.
The story is laced with several tantalizing threads that add a menacing tone. We learn of the father's abandoned passion for bird taxidermy, remnants of which are buried in the musty workshop cellar — rooks, crows, jackdaws, magpies, arranged in storytelling tableaus that are now his own little shop of horrors. We get glimpses of Connie's compromised past with vague references to a childhood accident. And we're introduced to a quartet of peripheral characters who flit in and out of Connie's reluctant recollections.
The discovery of a body and the furtive delivery of several mysterious notes propel us into a world of deception, revenge and justice, punctuated by the threatening temperament of the marshes. A reckoning awaits in the storm. But by whose hand?
In her latest novel, Kate Mosse guides us through the drafty manors and haunting streets of the village of Fishbourne, a town setting not far from her home today. Her sharp, attentive dialogue quickly distinguishes lords and ladies from laborers and house help … but it's another matter to be certain whom we should be rooting for.
"The Taxidermist's Daughter" is a wonderfully dark psychological puzzle that keeps the final pieces just out of reach until Mosse has us firmly in her grip. Then the cut is delivered and the tale finds its peace — with the careful precision of a taxidermist's scalpel.
GINNY GREENE, copy editor
