Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

Author Seth Grahame-Smith uses both historical fact and fiction in developing our sixteenth president’s character in his book Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Grahame-Smith intertwines historically documented events and myths about Lincoln’s life with his vampire hunting concept to make his book “believable.” Grahame-Smith explains major events that shaped Lincoln as a consequence of vampire activity. Nancy Lincoln’s death when Abraham was 9 years old, as well as the deaths of his aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Tom Sparrow, were explained as consequences of Lincoln’s father not paying his bills on time to his vampire loan collector. Grahame-Smith makes the claim that they were killed by a “fool’s dose of vampire blood.” In reality, the three died from milk sickness, which according to David Herbert Donald, a renowned Lincoln historian, was a disease that was caused by cows “eating the luxuriant but poisonous white snake root plant” they found on their wanderings through the wild forest. Additionally, after the death of his mother, Grahame-Smith’s Lincoln is pictured with his drunken father, who recounts the story of Lincoln’s grandfather’s death as an attack by vampires instead of Native Americans. Donald and popular …show more content…
This book poses no threat to Lincoln’s good name because the author makes it known that the book is fiction by including events that either didn’t happen in Lincoln’s life or are considered myths, and by blatantly thanking someone for Photoshop help in his acknowledgment section. The author makes no claim that this story is the truth about Lincoln, his book is marketed as a fantasy horror book. Grahame-Smith’s clever weaving of fact and fiction makes for a good story, but that is all this book will ever be a cleverly told story that with very limited research could be found out to be complete