GlassFire Magazine

Home     Editorial     Fiction     Poetry     Reviews     Submissions     Contact Us

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

    Sarah Vowell is well-known for taking her readers on an editorial travel through history, but her travels on Assassination Vacation are even more intriguing than usual.

            The three assassinations that Vowell chooses to revisit are those of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, and William McKinley in 1901.  This forty-year stint in America’s history was traumatized by the bloody turnover of the Presidency.

            Vowell opens the book by recounting her trip to Massachusetts to visit Chesterwood, the house that the builder of the Lincoln Memorial, Daniel Chester French, lived in.  While there, she had to stay at a bed & breakfast.  One of the things about these quaint little settings is how guests sit down with the house occupants for breakfast first thing in the morning. 

            Well, to set up the conversation that ensues, Vowell explains that she is “the black hole of breakfast.”  However, when they question her about what she did, Vowell tells them that she has gone to see the theater production, Assassins, and her enthusiasm at explaining this parade of presidents and their killers caused quite a reaction among the other vacationers.  At this point, she explains that when she is uncomfortable and around strangers she turns into “a conversational Mount Saint Helens” that erupts suddenly and without warning.

            This type of witty and thought-filled interaction peppers almost all of her observances, making them more than just a simple historical documentation of the facts.  In doing this, she turns what might be otherwise dry subject matter into an engaging, and often laugh out loud, experience. 

            There is also a lot of interesting, and little known, facts that Vowell takes the time to explore surrounding the assassinations.  For example, Robert Todd Lincoln was in the same town as each of the three abovementioned presidents when they were shot, and John Wilkes Booth has a relatively famous actor brother, Edwin Booth, who still has a statue in New York City. 

            Assassination Vacation is the perfect read for a little escapism that will not only transport the readers out of their ordinary lives while they’re reading it but will also take them back through time.  With someone as peculiar as Sarah Vowell as your guide, it will almost assuredly be an extraordinary journey.