Halcyon – Elliot Ackerman

This tale of family, pride, power, and human weakness is set in a slightly bifurcated revisionist history with Gore as president. We witness the ramifications of a government-sponsored program of the resurrection of the dead and its impact on one family and on the remains of a distinguished career.  Told through the eyes of a divorced history professor trying to write a book about the Civil War on his sabbatical, it is set in the background of a movement to remove a prominent Gettysburg monument of Lee; echoes of the me-too movement; and clear signs of our democracy in danger.  Lots to think about: is the possibility of extended (eternal?) life a good or an evil; or do we have the ability to ever heal as a nation after the Civil War?