Stephen Harrigan Boeken

The novel begins in 1832 during the Black Hawk War, where Micajah (Cage) Weatherby meets Lincoln. Afterward, Cage moves to Springfield, Illinois, joining a group of ambitious young men, including Lincoln, in this burgeoning frontier town. Through Cage, we learn about Lincoln in his twenties and thirties, a circuit-riding lawyer and state legislator driven by immense ambition. To Cage and his peers—Joshua Speed, Billy Herndon, Ninian Edwards, Stephen Douglas, and Jim Reed—Lincoln is a beloved figure, both powerful and charmingly awkward, a gifted storyteller whose potential they all recognize. Cage, a poet, admires Lincoln but often clashes with him, particularly over Lincoln’s legal ethics, as he takes on controversial cases, including a murderer's defense and clients on both sides of the slavery debate. While navigating his own tumultuous affair with an independent widow, Cage observes Lincoln's journey through high spirits and deep sadness, marked by bouts of depression. The narrative also explores Lincoln's challenging courtship of another Mary and his eventual marriage to the politically astute Mary Todd. By 1847, Mary has given Lincoln a son and some stability, though this creates conflict with Cage, steering them onto diverging paths.

The fragile, 1952 postwar tranquility of a young boy’s world explodes one summer day when a leopard escapes from the Oklahoma City zoo, throwing all the local residents into dangerous excitement, in this evocative story of a child’s confrontation with his deepest fears For Grady McClarty, an ever-watchful but bewildered five-year-old boy, World War II is only a troubling, ungraspable event that occurred before he was born. But he feels its effects all around him. He and his older brother Danny are fatherless, and their mother, Bethie, is still grieving for her fighter-pilot husband. Most of all, Grady senses it in his two uncles: young combat veterans determined to step into a fatherhood role for their nephews, even as they struggle with the psychological scars they carry from the war. When news breaks that a leopard has escaped from the Oklahoma City Zoo, the playthings and imagined fears of Grady’s childhood begin to give way to real-world terrors, most imminently the dangerous jungle cat itself. The Leopard Is Loose is a stunning encapsulation of America in the 1950s, and a moving portrait of a boy’s struggle to find his place in the world.

Combining memoir and mystery, the narrative delves into the three secrets of Fátima while tracing a man's personal journey of faith. As he confronts his beliefs and the profound implications of these secrets, the story intertwines personal reflection with broader spiritual themes, inviting readers to explore the intersection of faith, doubt, and revelation.