My Life with the Lincolns

My dad used to be Abraham Lincoln. When I was six and learning to read, I saw his initials were A. B.

E., Albert Baruch Edelman. ABE. That's when I knew.

Mina Edelman believes that she and her family are the Lincolns reincarnated. Her main task for the next three months to protect her father from assassination, her mother from insanity, and herselfWillie Lincoln incarnatefrom death at age twelve. Apart from that, the summer of 1966 should be like any other.

But Mina's dad begins taking Mina along to hear speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr in Chicago. And soon he brings the freedom movement to their own small town, with consequences for everyone, in Gayle Brandeis's My Life with the Lincolns.

Brandeis is the author of the novels for adults, The Book of Dead Birds a Novel and Self Storage. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Salon. com and The Nation. She teaches and lives in Riverside, California with her family.