THE HOUSE OF LINCOLN tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's ascendance from rumpled lawyer to U.S. president to Great Emancipator through the eyes of a young immigrant who arrives in Lincoln's home of Springfield, Illinois, from Madeira, Portugal. Showing intelligence beyond society's expectations, 14-year-old Ana Ferreira is offered a job in the Lincoln household assisting Mary Lincoln with their boys and with the hosting duties borne by the wife of a rising political star. Ana bears witness to the evolution of Lincoln's views on equality and the Union, and observes in full complexity the psyche and pain of his bold, polarizing wife. Yet, alongside her dearest friend in the Black community, she also directly experiences how slavery contradicts the promise of freedom in her adopted country.

At the age of 35, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium --- with her three children and nanny in tow --- to study art. Not long after her arrival, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her children repair to a quiet artists’ colony in France where she can recuperate. Emerging from a deep sorrow, she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, and the two begin a fierce love affair that spans the decades and the globe.