The Day Lincoln Lost

 The Day Lincoln Lost by Charles Rosenberg   432 pages

I’ve been an admirer of Abraham Lincoln and his family since I first learned of him in grade school.  I’m always up for reading anything about him, be it fiction or fact.  I admit, however, that I was a tad skeptical of the premise of this novel, that Lincoln lost the 1860 election (that premise was born strictly from reading the title). Alternative history isn’t my thing.

I wasn’t sure how this story would start, but I was hooked from the very beginning. It’s Kentucky in 1860. Twelve-year-old Lucy Battelle, a slave, is about to be sold. It’s probably a good thing given that Riverview’s current master, Ezekiel Goshorn, is quite cruel and quite inept to run a plantation.  However, Lucy has heard what happens to slaves who are sold “Down South.” So she runs away.

She runs and runs. She is discovered in one of her hiding place, but her discoverer was an abolitionist. He takes her to Springfield, Illinois, where she is to be placed on the Underground Railroad. Goshorn also makes his way to Springfield. Unfortunately she is captured.

Across town, Abby Kelly Foster, a fiery abolitionist, is making a speech about the evils of slavery. Seems everyone, almost, who was any one is Springfield was there. After the speech, the crowd bursts out into the square and create a small riot, and Lucy escapes again.

Foster is arrested on inciting a riot and is jailed. She manages to convince Lincoln to represent her, although the damage that may be caused to the upcoming presidential election and the Republican Party is high.

It’s quite interesting to watch/hear Lincoln decide what to do.  He takes the case and hope for the best. The trial becomes a circus, with the election coming closer and closer.  Then the story goes into an in-depth look that Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment, which was quiet apropos given that the United States, when I was reading this, was undergoing a crisis of leadership. The Twelfth Amendment is about the Electoral College, which I don’t really understand. Therefore given all that about the Twelfth Amendment and that Lincoln didn’t lose anything as far as the title is concerned, The Day Lincoln Lost receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

 

Final Flight

Final Flight by Eric C. Anderson   284 pages

In March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpar International Airport.  Nothing unusual happened during takeoff. The pilots were experience. The flight was crowded with 227 passengers and 12 crew members taking a red-eye to Ho Chi Min City. A little less than one hour later, the plane disappeared from both Kuala Lumpar and Ho Chi Min City’s radars. As far as I know, neither the plane’s fuselage nor bodies has ever been located. There were no distress signals.  It just disappeared as if it never existed.

Great start for a thriller novel. Fast forward to 2023. And that’s where I got lost.  There were too many details, too many characters, too much going on that I couldn’t follow the plot.  But here’s the synopsis from the book jacket:

“Former Air Force maintenance officer Jason Montgomery and his erstwhile wrench-twister, Rob "Ski" Kalawski, have just landed the gig of their lives. China Air's aging fleet of Boeing 777s now desperately needs navigation hardware and software upgrades. It's a multimillion-dollar contract, and they're just the guys to do it. Too easy, right?

“Wrong. The Japanese firm supplying the gear knows the Chinese will reverse-engineer and steal it, so they've planted a deadly navigation bug to trigger at the first sign of theft. Jason's just the middleman, but he finds himself trapped between yakuza gangsters, a tattooed dragon-lady sales exec, and murderous Russian mobsters looking to make a profit on the missing airplanes and passengers. If these crazies don't start behaving like moral adults, people are going to die by the hundreds . . . and they do.”

I would like to blame my lack of “getting it” due to the major distraction of the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020, but I haven’t had any trouble focusing on the other 20 or so books I’ve finished since March. There were too many characters who were too hard to keep straight and too many details that caused my brain to glaze over.  By the end, I was just reading words.

“Final Flight” was nothing like I expected or hoped it would be.  Therefore “Final Flight” receives 1 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.