Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. There's a cemetery not far from me that's actually really pleasant to walk through on a beautiful day. It was pretty clutch having it nearby early on in the pandemic. And arguably, the most famous or infamous maybe person buried there is John Wilkes Booth. He's not there by himself either.

He's on a family plot with other Booths who, taken as a whole, are a really complicated and

interesting family. That's what Karen Joy Fowler's new historical novel is about. It's titled

Booth, and it digs into how this family, which included abolitionists,

by the way, raised a guy like John Wilkes Booth. And Fowler tells NPR Scott Simon about

the difficulty in balancing wanting to learn more about his family with not giving him more

undeserved attention. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I did not want to write a book about John Wilkes. Karen Joy Fowler says in an author's note to her

new novel, which is Booth, as in John Wilkes Booth.

This is a man who craved attention and has gotten too much of it.

I didn't think he deserved mine.

But she persisted because Booth had nine siblings

and because events in America kept drawing her back

to thoughts and perplexities presented by the man

who fatally shot Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865.

Karen Joy Fowler, author of the bestselling, The Jane Austen Book Club, joins us now from London.

Thanks so much for being with us.

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