Wealthy Wall Street speculator Steven Taylor finds that his wife Emily Bradford has a lover, struggling artist David Shaw. Steven investigates Shaw and manipulates him into murdering Emily. It seems like a perfect crime.

Indiana, 1817. The entire nation, only 40 years old and a few years removed from a second war of independence, is raw. Men, women, and children alike must battle nature and disease to survive in remote log cabins. This is young Abraham Lincoln's world. Spanning three years of the future president's childhood, The Better Angels explores his family, the hardships that shaped him, the tragedy that marked him forever, and the two women who guided him to immortality.