Perry Fox, a resident of Eden, has published his debut novel, Lincoln's Double: Friend or Foe, a work of historical fiction that reimagines the life of his grandfather, a 6'5" Confederate soldier who bore a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. The book, announced this week, is the product of family lore and a speculative leap: what if that ancestor had been drawn into a plot involving the president he resembled?
The novel's premise hinges on a botched kidnapping, an unlikely friendship between the two men, and a desperate race to stop an assassination. Fox said the story grew out of tales his father told him about his own father. "I've always been fascinated by the stories my father told me about his own father," Fox said. "Writing this book was a way for me to connect with a grandfather I never got to meet and to explore the incredible 'what ifs' of history. It's been a labor of love, and I'm thrilled to finally share it with my community."
The announcement matters beyond the debut of a local author. Lincoln's Double enters a crowded field of Civil War fiction, but its angle is unusual: it uses a family resemblance as the fulcrum for an alternate history. The novel moves from the simple farms of Florida to the high-stakes political arena of Washington, D.C., offering a fresh perspective on one of America's most defining eras. In doing so, it joins a tradition of counterfactual narratives that ask readers to reconsider how much of history turns on contingency, personality, and sheer chance.
For Eden, the publication is a modest cultural milestone: a local writer turning private family memory into a public story. For readers of historical fiction, the appeal may lie in the book's central conceit, a Confederate soldier who looks like Lincoln and is pulled into a kidnapping plot that could rewrite the war's ending. The novel does not claim to be history, but it uses the past as a stage for exploring loyalty, identity, and the strange accidents that shape nations.
Fox's grandfather, a Confederate soldier, never met Lincoln, but the resemblance is the seed from which the novel grows. By imagining a friendship between the two men, Fox creates a narrative that is as much about reconciliation as it is about conflict. The book's subtitle, Friend or Foe, signals the ambiguity at its heart: a man who could be either, depending on the choices he makes.
The publication also highlights the role of family history in creative work. Fox's novel is not a memoir, but it is deeply personal, and that personal stake may give the story its emotional weight. As a debut, Lincoln's Double announces a new storyteller in Eden, one whose imagination is grounded in the past but aimed at the present.
