During the American Civil War, President Lincoln's beloved son Willie dies at the age of eleven. According to newspaper reports, the grieving father visited the tomb alone to hold his son once more. George Saunders transforms this into an all-encompassing story about love and loss, as original, fascinating, and grand as it could be. Throughout this night, in which Abraham Lincoln bids farewell to his son, the ghosts awaken—spirits of the dead in the cemetery, as well as those of history and literature, both real and fictional, who intermingle. For Willie Lincoln exists in the liminal space between this world and the next, known in Tibetan tradition as Bardo, and a furious debate ignites in the Georgetown cemetery over the boy's soul, a multi-voiced chorus that culminates in one profound question: Why?.