Lazaretto

In five previous novels, Diane McKinney-Whetstone has painted a vivid portrait of 20th-century black life in Philadelphia—from the Jazz Age in her first book, Tumbling, right up to the 1990s in Blues Dancing. With her sixth novel, Lazaretto, McKinney-Whetstone turns to the 19th century.

The book opens on the night of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, when…