Rebecca Wallace

He was the most famous actor in America. On the streets of New York, people stared when he walked by. When he toured the South, legislatures changed their meeting times so everyone could see his plays. And no one played Hamlet like Edwin Booth.

Today, 120 years after his death, most people know Booth only as the brother of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, if they know him at all. But he remains a key figure in the American theater. From the saloon stages of Gold Rush San Francisco to the lights of Broadway, his natural, nuanced stage style blazed fresh trails. Booth taught the faces in the crowd a thoughtful new way of telling a story.

Rebecca Wallace tells Booth's own tale in her biography "The Assassin's Brother." A longtime journalist and actor, she's been prowling newsrooms in the San Francisco area since the '90s. To read more, follow her on Twitter, @wallacewords

Rebecca also has a forthcoming novel about a tough cops reporter trying to make a new life in Hungary. She tweets as her protagonist, Catherine Giotto, here: @reporter1999