“The Hanging Boy” by Joseph Malham

The Hanging Boy

Joseph Malham
3 Magi Books (2026)
ISBN: 979-8234075604
Reviewed by Paul Knobloch for Reader Views (07/2026)

Joseph Malham’s The Hanging Boy distinguishes itself by approaching one of the most familiar episodes in American history through an unusually effective narrative framework. The story is told by retired General Samuel Everdine, who looks back on his childhood friendships with the Lincoln family and Mary Surratt before either assumed their place in American history. As both a boy caught up in extraordinary events and an old soldier interpreting them through decades of hindsight, Samuel becomes far more than the narrator of a familiar historical tragedy. He serves as the novel’s emotional and historical lens, allowing Malham to humanize figures too often imprisoned within legend while reminding readers that history is first experienced as ordinary life and only later understood as history.

Samuel is the novel’s greatest strength. He is neither implausibly precocious nor merely an innocent observer drifting through famous events. His curiosity, decency, and growing moral awareness make him a believable guide through an increasingly dangerous world. As his relationships deepen with Tad Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Surratt, and John Wilkes Booth, the novel quietly shifts from a historical adventure into a coming-of-age story. Samuel’s tragedy is not simply losing Lincoln, whom he has come to love as a father, but discovering that adults he admires are capable of deception, fanaticism, and betrayal. That gradual loss of innocence gives the novel its emotional foundation.

Malham also deserves considerable credit for resisting caricature. Lincoln is portrayed not as the marble figure preserved in monuments but as a warm, humorous father whose kindness is expressed through ordinary interactions rather than lofty speeches. His affection for Tad, his patience with Samuel, and his quiet humility make him feel remarkably human. Mary Surratt is handled with similar restraint. She is portrayed as devout, charitable, and sincerely affectionate toward Samuel while simultaneously becoming increasingly entangled in Booth’s conspiracy. Rather than forcing readers toward either condemnation or exoneration, Malham allows these conflicting qualities to coexist. That ambiguity ultimately proves far more compelling than a simpler moral portrait.

Booth is equally well realized. Introduced under the alias “Mr. Boyd,” he initially embodies the romantic glamour that a celebrated actor would naturally project to an impressionable boy. He teaches Samuel fencing and possesses an undeniable charisma. As the novel progresses, however, his theatrical confidence begins to fracture. Mood swings and flashes of barely controlled violence gradually replace his earlier charm, culminating in moments that are genuinely unsettling. Malham wisely avoids transforming Booth into a conventional villain. Instead, readers watch a man consumed by obsession while Samuel struggles to reconcile the frightening stranger before him with the hero he once admired.

One of the novel’s most impressive qualities is its patience. Malham spends considerable time depicting daily life in wartime Washington: church services, carriage rides, quiet domestic moments, military celebrations, and Samuel’s visits to the White House. These quieter passages are not digressions but the very substance of the novel. Because readers come to know these characters through ordinary routines rather than constant dramatic confrontations, the assassination carries genuine emotional weight.

Malham occasionally lingers over historical exposition, particularly when the older Samuel pauses to explain military campaigns or political developments in greater detail than the story requires. Fortunately, this is outweighed by the strength of the central relationships and the author’s careful recreation of Civil War Washington. The historical research is consistently impressive but rarely feels like an excuse to lecture, instead reinforcing the authenticity of Samuel’s world.

Ultimately, The Hanging Boy succeeds because it understands that historical fiction is rarely about changing the past; it is about changing the reader’s relationship to it. By filtering one of America’s defining tragedies through the memoirs of Brigadier General Samuel Everdine, Malham transforms familiar history into an intimate meditation on memory, faith, guilt, loyalty, and the painful loss of innocence.