The young Abraham Lincoln struggles through life as a mediocre prairie lawyer. He is responsible for a budget shortfall as a local politician and suffers from depression. When he falls in love with Mary Todd, his life takes a new direction. However, Mary’s family opposes their marriage, plunging Lincoln into a crisis that makes him doubt everything.

More than a thousand kilometers away, on the East Coast, Henry David Thoreau tries to live as independently as possible. He builds a cabin in the woods and soon refuses to pay taxes. When the tax authorities imprison him for a night, he writes a consequential essay on the duty of civil disobedience, which Abraham Lincoln also reads and cannot accept as a lawyer and politician. Lincoln fights his way out of his crisis and sets out to meet Thoreau. Thus, an incident occurs that the world history knows nothing about.

Sebastian Guhr constructs a sophisticated literary fiction that entertains brilliantly and raises questions about the political present. Also appearing are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the young Louisa May Alcott.