The honour of your company
is requested at dinner

Midnight will free the slaves… and marry the girl. Abraham wants to delay them both!

Sandwich, Massachusetts, December 31st, 1862. In a white house above the sea, Abraham has invited the whole quarreling country to dinner. Confederates and abolitionists. Freemen and fugitives. And a mediocre actor named Booth. A five course meal is to be served, and under the floorboards rumbles a foreboding sound.

Upstairs, his two wards are waiting to be married. Their guardian keeps finding reasons to delay, and Mary Todd has found out why.

What follows is a comedy of forged letters, identity, and blindfolds. A conspiracy is run by the women of the house, who mean to catch the founding father in his own appetite and hand him back to his wife. This is the night the Civil War climbs onto the tablecloth, the hanged hover above the food, and the question to be answered: Who is Abraham?

The Marriage of Figaro, set loose in the house of America on its last chance for emancipation. For readers of Lincoln in the Bardo and James, for anyone who reads poetry, and for anyone who has ever wanted the pardon to arrive just in time.