Summary

Chapter 1: The novel opens in the bardo, an intermediate state between death and the next stages of the afterlife. Hans Vollman, a 46-year-old printer, speaks of his marriage to a very young woman. He says that, due to his ne wife’s nervousness, they did not consummate the marriage on their wedding night. He also says that the day they finally planned to have sexual intercourse, he was struck by a falling beam in his office. He says this made him sick and that the doctor placed him in a special “sick-box” (5) for recovery. Vollman speaks this story to his acquaintance in the bardo Roger Bevins and to the young Willie Lincoln, who is slowly materializing in that place.

Chapters 2 – 8: These brief chapters describe a lavish state dinner organized by Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in the White House in the year of 1862. The...