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could not imagine what he might do if he could not sublimate his creative fervor into myriad other lives. One man’s life was too small to contain all that Junius possessed, all that possessed him.
    The entire family was delighted when Junius booked a two-week engagement at the Baltimore Museum in March 1847, for their home was boisterously merry whenever he was in it. The children eagerly memorized poems to recite and songs to perform for their father, each determined to earn the greatest share of his attention. Mary Ann showed off new stage costumes she had made, prepared his favorite meals, and blissfully fell into his embrace every night.
    Mary Ann and the children took great pride in the posters displayed throughout the city announcing Junius’s performances, especially the enormous banner hanging atop the theatre that proclaimed MR. BOOTH in letters three feet high. Once Mary Ann caught Edwin, Asia, and John conspiring in whispers to sneak inside and watch from the balcony, but abiding by Junius’s decrees that his children must never see him perform lest they be tempted to follow him onto the stage, she quickly put a stop to that.
    One afternoon while Junius was supposed to be at rehearsal, Mary Ann glanced out the window and was surprised to see him storming home, shoulders squared and head bowed as if he strode into a gale. She rose and went to meet him at the door, her first thought that the children had disobeyed her, that he had spied them watching him rehearse, that they had fled and he was in hot pursuit.
    â€œJunius?” she greeted him, but the look on his face, flushed with anger and dread, silenced her.
    â€œShe’s here,” he said, short of breath, his usually rich, compelling voice strangled in his throat. “Adelaide. She’s come to Baltimore.”
    Adelaide Delannoy Booth, Junius’s wife.
    For nearly thirty years, an ocean had separated Junius from his wife and eldest son, an ocean and an even broader chasm of lies and deception and steady financial support meant to keep Adelaide reassured and safely remote. For nearly thirty years, Adelaide had endured her husband’s long sojourn abroad, raising their son alone in London andin Brussels, where her mother lived, where she and Junius had met as he toured Europe with a group of traveling players. In all that time, regular, generous payments and utter ignorance of the new family he had created with Mary Ann had kept Adelaide content with their arrangement, but now, now—
    Mary Ann’s hand flew to her heart, her fingertips brushing the brooch with Byron’s portrait that Junius had given her so many years ago, when he had renounced his wife and firstborn son and had begged her to run away with him, when she had agreed to be his forever. “Are you certain Adelaide is in Baltimore?” she asked. Then she remembered the hired carriage she had observed parked across the street from their home, and the strange sensation that hostile, hateful eyes were upon her, and she knew.
    â€œAbsolutely certain,” said Junius. “She interrupted rehearsal to confront me in front of the entire cast, the crew, staff, everyone. The manager persuaded her to retire to his office, but even with the door closed, they must have heard every word of her denunciation.”
    Then the story was surely already spreading throughout Baltimore—the story, but not the truth.

    A lthough she was but a girl not yet eighteen and her devout Anglican parents had forbidden her to set foot within a theatre, Mary Ann Holmes knew that the rising young actor Junius Brutus Booth was a genius. All the London papers said so, even those that complained he was driving the city “Lear-mad” with astonishing, revelatory performances that compelled throngs of his exultant admirers into the streets, passionately reciting the mad king’s monologues and chanting the star’s name. Performances of
King Lear
had been forbidden for