Meet the Characters

Sins of the Family

John Ross

A tourist brat hit him in the head with a stone tomahawk when he was child which began his bizarre delusion he was Moses.  John was filled with anger and frustration and someone was going to have to pay.  Pharaoh would have to pay.  All he had to do now was to find him and kill him.

Bob Meade

On the surface he had the perfect life, a wonderful and an adoring bride, but underneath he was terrorized by memories of shirking his mother on her deathbed.  How could he survive the nightmare of being kidnapped by a group of escaped mental patients, knowing down deep in his heart he was a craven coward?

Heinrich Schmitt

He smirked at life because he knew he always won, whether it was getting away with murdering a rival from his days as a member of the Gestapo to eluding deportation to stand trial for his crime.  But a sick old body, unknown avenging killer angel and his weary wife were about to bring his world crashing down around him.

Dr. Harold Lippincott

He was sure he could handle John Ross’s delusions that he was Moses just as he could handle the misfit teen-agers Mike and Randy.  In the back of his mind, however, he kept remembering the warning from his disapproving father:  one day he would make a mistake in a diagnosis that would bring about disaster.

Jill Meade

All her life she felt as though something dreadful was about to happen.  Her mother was an alcoholic, her father had fits of depression, her grandmother was paranoid about her past in Germany, and her grandfather just sat there, not saying anything, just with an all-knowing smile.  She thought her new life with Bob would make her safe.  But then something dreadful happens.

Greta Schmidt

All her life she worshipped and obeyed her demanding husband Heinrich but feared the secrets hidden behind his wicked smile.  Then just when she could no longer physically take care of Heinrich after his stroke, her world completely collapsed with the deportation hearing and the hell the ensued.

Mike and Randy

They didn’t know how old they were or where they were from.  All they knew was that their mother drank a lot and passed on her need for beer to them.  She also dumped them on the side of the road and told them they had to take care of themselves.  And they did take care of themselves, no matter how many people suffered along the way.

___________________________________________________________

Lincoln In the Basement

Adam Christy
 Taking the Lincolns by gunpoint on the service stairs of the White House to the basement made him nervous.  The forced silence reminded him of eating breakfast with his family before attending his mother’s funeral.  When he innocently said blueberry muffins had been his mother’s favorite, his Aunt Cora sternly told him to be silent.  Even since he was twelve years old, silence had always sounded like death.
Looking down at the traps and his spreading belly, he touched his cheeks, now sagging, his eyes surrounded by wrinkles, and his mouth jerking in constant, silent conversations, and wondered what had happened to his dreams.  He was on the verge of tears when the billiards room door opened, causing him to jump and hover behind the barrels and c rates, shivering over the iron trap, as though he were a rat himself.
Gabby Zook
Alethia Halliday
 September 1, 1862, was the most fortunate in her life, or at least she thought as she unpacked her personal items in the large bedroom next to the oval sitting room on the second floor of the president’s home.  Only days earlier the plump woman with dark hair and full cheeks had been in the Old Capitol federal military prison waiting to be hanged for espionage.  Then she remembered the words of her old childhood friend Rose Greenhow about life:  a farce, a perfect farce.
New immigrants from Scotland she and her father worked hard to earn money for a new life in America.  All was going well until he dropped dead on a New York City street.  Instead of taking their savings to bury him, she allowed the city to dispose of his body in the Hudson River.  Taking her money she went to Washington, D.C., to work as a volunteer in a military hospital to atone for her sins against her father.  There she met the mysterious young soldier who worked in the White House.
Jessie Home
Cordie Zook
 She never thought she was that bright when it came to things beyond cleaning a floor, washing clothes or sewing.  Her brother Gabby had been the smart one.  When they were young she pinned her hopes on him.  She always saw herself tending to Gabby and his family, and he’d take care of her.  Then he came home from West Point, all broken down.  She never knew what happened, only that from then on she had to be the smart one and take care of Gabby.
He was born the son of a freeman in Boston, who taught French to merchants who traded in the Caribbean.  But his mother came to Boston in the middle of the night in her mother’s arms, stolen property from a Southern tobacco plantation.  She was taken away under the Fugitive Slave Act.  He wanted better for himself, but all he could become was a butler in the White House.  The Only thing saving him from being eaten alive by hatred was his love for the cook Phebe.
Neal
Phebe
 She had been born on a South Carolina plantation and sold as part of one of the largest slave auctions ever held in the South.  A New York reporter bought and freed her.  Before she knew it she was a cook in the White House, witnessing the most disturbing events going on in the basement.  She wanted to tell someone of her suspicions but that might result in losing her job—a step back toward slavery, and she did not want to take that risk
  A Union army deserter, he was scheduled to be hanged at the Old Capitol military prison when Stanton whisked him away to become Abraham Lincoln.  The job scared him; he hated Stanton; but he loved Alethia.  The tenderness in her eyes raised hopes that she loved him as much as he loved her.  But he had secrets—deep, dark, terrible secrets—that he feared would turn her looks of love to hatred. 
Duff Reed