A Cautionary Tale Applicable to Our Present World

The Year of Jublio! by Joseph T Major
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's long been theorized that John Wilkes Booth and his convicted accomplices were in fact part of a much larger conspiracy aimed at wiping out as much of the Union government as possible. This novel of alternate history is based upon the idea that, not only was this true, but it succeeded almost completely.

However, the author does not immediately present us with this scenario. Instead he begins the novel some years later, when our protagonist is a youngster growing up in a United States that superficially looks like the Gilded Age US we know from history books. Except weird little things keep popping up, such as the references to Lincoln as "Father Abraham," and being spoken of as though he were still President, yet also being referred to as having been martyred. Only slowly do we learn how Lincoln's assassination was part of a decapitation strike that wiped out the entire Line of Succession, leaving the surviving senior Union government officials in a position where they had to somehow maintain the function of the Executive Branch, but none of them had any formal standing to assume the Presidency.

Much like Aleck in the author's Alternate World War II series, the protagonist of this novel is American-born but with strong ties to the UK aristocracy, being heir to a baronetcy. As he goes to England to receive an appropriate education and subsequently becomes an officer in the British Army in the Boer War and then their equivalent of World War I, he watches the land of his birth go deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole of obsession with seccesionism and slaveocracy.

I do not believe that the author intended this novel to be allegorical of any Primary World government (although certain actions are strongly reminiscent of the former USSR, particularly under Stalin, albeit with the Cult of Personality focused on a martyred President rather than a living Leader), but it is certainly a very applicable warning against the dangers of becoming obsessed with an enemy long after the defeat of the nation it represents. And most of all, the danger of erasing or rewriting history, as the alternate America does in reducing every leader from the Revolution to the 1860 election to nameless ciphers, as if Lincoln personally masterminded and led every success the US ever enjoyed.

Review copy provided by the author.

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