Garrett restricts the "now" of his narrative to the last two days in Ralegh's life. This radical limitation in a novel of such length and scope allows the author to place emphasis on character more than plot, on motives more than facts, on psychology more than history. Garrett dramatizes minds in action as they dream, remember, perceive, and plan. Through multiple perspectives, the novel draws the past and the future into the present of Ralegh's final hours. The mystery of how such a resourceful figure could find himself in such a predicament focuses the fantasies, memories, and speculations of characters from all social levels and dispositions. At the center of these dreams, memories, and speculations is Ralegh himself.

Because the main characters are not purely fictional creations but are primary actors on the stage of history (characters whose fate the reader presumably already knows), there is none of...