Background The novel was inspired by a story Saunders's wife's cousin told him about how Lincoln visited his son Willie's
crypt at
Oak Hill Cemetery in
Georgetown on several occasions to hold the body, a story that seems to be verified by contemporary newspaper accounts. In March 2017, Saunders provided more detail on the background and conception of his novel: Saunders first announced the novel in a 2015
New York Times interview with the novelist
Jennifer Egan, revealing that it would have a "supernatural element" while remaining "ostensibly historical". The novel's title was announced in a conversation between Saunders and
Susan Sarandon in
Interview magazine, in April 2016. That same month, a description of the book was posted on the
Random House website.
Development Saunders did not originally intend to write a novel (and had avoided doing so in the past), but the story of Lincoln cradling his son's body stayed with him, and he eventually decided to write about it. Saunders rearranged historical sources to get at the "necessary historical facts", and included excerpts from them in the novel. In a
The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast with
David Remnick, Saunders described how a melancholic
Lincoln the Mystic statue, sculpted by
James Earle Fraser, propelled him through the novel. The statue is in front of his office at
Syracuse University, near the Tolley Hall. Saunders has said that he was "scared to write this book". He worried about his ability to portray Lincoln, but decided that limiting his characterization to a single night made the writing process "not easy, but
easier, because I knew just where he was in his trajectory as president". Given that his work is generally set in the present, Saunders compared writing a novel set in 1862 to "running with leg weights" because he "couldn't necessarily do the voices that I would naturally create". ==Setting==