All Other Nights
A Novel
19 March 2010
Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding the British Commonwealth.
Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
"Slam-bang.…superb." —Washington Post
How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, it is a question his commanders have already answered for him—on Passover, 1862, he is ordered to murder his own uncle in New Orleans, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. After this harrowing mission, Jacob is recruited to pursue another enemy agent, the daughter of a Virginia family friend. But this time, his assignment isn’t to murder the spy, but to marry her. Their marriage, with its riveting and horrifying consequences, reveals the deep divisions that still haunt American life today.
Based on real personalities such as Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy’s Jewish secretary of state and spymaster, and on historical facts and events ranging from an African American spy network to the dramatic self-destruction of the city of Richmond, All Other Nights is a gripping and suspenseful story of men and women driven to the extreme limits of loyalty and betrayal. It is also a brilliant parable of the rift in America that lingers a century and a half later: between those who value family and tradition first, and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.
In this eagerly awaited third novel, award-winning author Dara Horn brings us page-turning storytelling at its best. Layered with meaning, All Other Nights reinvents the most American of subjects with originality and insight.
Reviews
"Engrossing.…delicious." — New York Times Book Review
"Vibrant and compelling." — Ruth Andrew Ellenson, Los Angeles Times
"All Other Nights has the propulsive, suspenseful narrative of an espionage thriller, but the novel stands out because of the larger moral dilemmas Horn weaves into an epic." — Sarah Weinman, New York Post
"An enjoyably fast-paced amalgam of historical romance, spy novel and political thriller.…a rare and memorable portrait of Jewish life during the Civil War." — Emily Bingham, Wall Street Journal
"An astonishing storyteller.…[an] extraordinary novel." — Financial Times
"Riveting…written in meticulous but energetic prose…All Other Nights interrogates and celebrates nationhood and freedom.…Conflating Jewish and American history, Horn’s third and most accomplished novel portrays Passover, the festival of freedom, amid the carnage caused by slavery. Horn’s lively, timely tale extends the range of American Jewish literature beyond familiar themes of immigration, assimilation and extermination." — Steven G. Kellman, The Forward
"The richness of the background painted so ably by Dara Horn makes what is a coming-of-age saga a compelling account of one man’s development through the horrors of the Civil War.…Dara Horn’s skill as a writer and depth of comprehension is fully realized in this remarkable novel." — Morton Teicher, Jewish Journal
"A Civil War spy page-turner meets an exploration of race and religion in 19th-century America in Horn’s enthralling latest.…Horn propels the love story at a thriller’s pace; the mix of love and loyalty played out in a divided America is sublime." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A complex, multilayered, and thoroughly involving historical novel. Horn both unearths a fascinating, relatively unexplored aspect of American history—the role of Jewish Americans in the Civil War—and delivers a novel rich in human emotion and ambiguity. A triumph" — Booklist (starred review)
"A tale of adventure that weaves the Civil War and the Jews of the North and South together in a web of betrayal and love, dignity and loss, that takes the breath away and makes the heart pound." — Anne Roiphe
Also By: Dara Horn 
One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe
Hardback, 2025
A lost Afikomen, a time-traveling talking goat and a never-ending seder illuminate the meaning of Passover in Dara Horn’s dryly funny graphic novel
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
Paperback, 2022
A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
E Book, 2021
A startling exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living.
Eternal Life: A Novel
Paperback, 2019
What would it really mean to live forever?
Eternal Life: A Novel
E Book, 2018
What would it really mean to live forever?
