Washington City, 1862: The United States lies in tatters, and the Civil War seems without end, despite Abraham Lincoln's determination to keep his beloved country united. Lincoln's soul is tested when tragedy strikes the White House: Willie, Lincoln's eleven-year-old son, the shining light in the president's life, dies - of typhoid fever, the doctors say.

Then a message arrives, suggesting that murder, not illness, caused Willie's death. Lincoln asks John Hay, his trusted aide, to investigate. Hay, a boxer and a poet, is an adventurous, irreverent, skeptical, even cynical young man who is as close to Lincoln as a son.

The more Hay unearths, the more daunting his task seems. Suspicions of a secessionist conspiracy within the Executive Mansion itself. A threat to Lincoln's surviving sons. An extortion attempt against the president's hellcat of a wife. As the war rages on, John Hay chases the truth of Willie's murder through the loftiest and lowest corners of Washington City.

As he closes in, he discovers just how far Lincoln's enemies will go to keep him silent.