The White House is haunted.
11:31 PM on January 20, 2033, after a long inauguration day, newly-elected President Joshua Land enters the Oval Office and sits down at the Resolute Desk to read the letter from the outgoing president, Daniel Manning. In that letter, President Manning says that for everyone who pursues the presidency, the White House is their white whale, their Moby Dick. And, as Moby Dick haunted Captain Ahab, so also the White House haunts each president.
At first, Joshua thinks the letter is a joke, some kind of hazing ritual the previous president plays on the new president. But, as eerie occurrences begin happening throughout the White House, President Land begins to wonder if maybe Daniel’s letter was a genuine warning.
Eventually, President Land discovers that the White House is in fact haunted. Joshua’s agenda is “less government at home, and more Democracy abroad”. But, the ghosts think Democracy has run its course and needs to be eliminated because it can no longer effectively fix the world’s problems. The ghosts explain that they have been haunting the White House since Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. Ever since, they have helped each president gradually prepare the country and the world for the transition away from Democracy to a better form of government. The ghosts’ think the world is now ready for that better form of government.
Joshua is told that if he does not comply, the haunting will intensify.
Finding himself at a crossroads, an intersection where chance and destiny meet, President Land must decide whether to ignore the ghosts’ demands and continue on his current course, or fulfill what the White House says is the presidency’s destiny. With a life that has been filled with pain, will Joshua be able to manage the demons from his past as he faces the ghosts of his presidency?
Combining supernatural horror and politics into an unsettling drama, this story will leave a reader unsure of what scares him or her more, the ghosts or the government.
If Stephen King and Thomas Jefferson teamed up to write a novel it would have been this book.
