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As the American Civil War raged on, Abraham Lincoln was devastated by the death from typhoid of his eleven-year-old son, Willie. He was laid to rest in Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown and newspapers reported that Lincoln was in the habit of returning to the crypt to hold the boy's body. So far, so apparently factual, but in this extraordinary first novel George Saunders weaves a magical, surreal tale of familial love and loss which breaks free of the earthly and moves to the supernatural. Sometimes it's funny but more often it's terrifying. We are in the bardo - in the Tibetan tradition, a state of consciousness between other states of consciousness in which it will be determined whether Willie ascends to nirvana or falls back and has to be born into a new body. A struggle erupts over Willie's soul and it will be fought out over a single night.