I thought this was a short story collection. Someone I read online had recommended an earlier short story, but this was what my library had. The book interweaves two very different story lines, so it wasn't until chapter three that I realized.
One line consists of letters from a post Civil War woman running a boarding house in Tenessee to her deceased sister, while dealing with a boarder who may John Wilkes Booth. The other is the first person narrative of a Finn, a teacher losing his brother to cancer, and his ex-girlfriend to suicide. There are echoes within each story line of the other, but to say this doesn't neatly wrap things up is an understatement. Which is fine by me, although perhaps I wasn't in the right frame of mind for the mix of grief and insanity.