Lincoln's Dreams by Connie Willis

 

Jeff Johnston is a researcher for a novelist who focuses on the Civil War.  He has been to all the battlefields and knows much more about the subject than the average person.  But his author has become fixated on the topic of Lincoln's dreams and it's putting the deadline for his latest novel in jeopardy.  Lincoln dreamed of his death days before his assassination.  He dreamed often of his son who he loved to distraction and who died, Willie.  He dreamed of the war and the battles before they happened.  What do his dreams mean?  Lincoln had acromegaly.  Were his dreams related to this?

The novelist gives a party and invites Jeff's college roommate who works at a dream institute.  While he is talking to the roommate, Jeff talks to the man's girlfriend, Annie.  It turns out that Annie came to the institute because she is having vivid dreams of the Civil War battles.  Instead of helping her, the roommate has brought her to his house and turned her into his girlfriend, obviously a professional error.  Jeff is intrigued by Annie and wants to help her.  

Soon Jeff is taking Annie to various Civil War battlefields and helping her interpret her dreams.  Can he save Annie with whom he has fallen in love?  They soon realize that she is somehow dreaming Lincoln's dreams.  While it is useful for the book, it is also tearing Annie's mind apart.  What can be done?

Connie Willis is well known in the science fiction/fantasy world having won numerous Hugo and Nebula awards and been named a SWFA Grand Master.  Often her books are humorous fantasy and I've read and enjoyed several of those.  This one is quite serious and the reader will learn much about the battles of the Civil War, about Robert E. Lee's life and his horse, Traveller, and about Lincoln's life during the war and leading up to his assassination.  I often see this book in those lists of books you should read and I'm glad to have read it although it is quite a difference from other of her books.  This book is recommended for historical fiction and science fiction readers.