Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was one of the eight persons convicted in the 1865 Lincoln assassination trial. Four of them were involved in helping the assassin John Wilkes Booth plan and carry out the assassination, and were executed. Dr. Mudd and the other three were not involved in the assassination, but were either involved with Booth in an earlier plot against Lincoln, or thought to have helped Booth escape capture after the assassination. They were incarcerated at Fort Jefferson, a Union Army military prison located on a remote island in the Gulf of Mexico, a thousand miles from Dr. Mudd's home in Maryland. Fort Jefferson housed an assortment of military criminals, including deserters, murderers, and thieves. It was a rough crowd. A standing order said: "If a prisoner refuses to obey orders the sentinel must shoot him, and then use his bayonet, at the same time calling for the guard." Shortly after his arrival, Dr. Mudd attempted to escape by stowing away on a visiting supply ship but was caught and confined in the fort's dungeon for almost four months. In 1867, Fort Jefferson faced a devastating yellow fever outbreak that claimed many lives. Amid the crisis, Dr. Mudd and a civilian doctor from Key West cared for the sick and dying, including the prison guards. When the epidemic was over, 300 soldiers signed a petition asking President Andrew Johnson to pardon Dr. Mudd, citing his heroic service during the epidemic. Johnson granted the pardon shortly before he left office, saying: "I am satisfied that the guilt found by the said judgment against Samuel A. Mudd was of receiving, entertaining, harboring, and concealing John Wilkes Booth and David E. Herold, with the intent to aid, abet and assist them in escaping from justice after the assassination of the late President of the United States, and not of any other or greater participation or complicity in said abominable crime." After his release, Dr. Mudd returned home to his family in Maryland, resuming his work as a country doctor and farmer until his death in 1883. Though his actions following Lincoln's assassination remain controversial, Dr. Mudd's heroic work during the yellow fever epidemic, when he himself almost died, redeemed him in the eyes of many.

Robert Summers has published two books. The first book, The Assassin's Doctor, is a biography of his great grandfather, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who provided medical assistance to John Wilkes Booth following the Lincoln assassination. Robert's earlier writings on Dr. Mudd have all been incorporated into The Assassin's Doctor.

Robert's mother was born and raised on the Mudd family farm where John Wilkes Booth sought medical help from Dr. Mudd after Booth had assassinated president Lincoln. Her father was Samuel Mudd II, a one year-old baby when Booth came to the farm. Her room growing up on the farm in the early 1900's was the same room Booth stayed in when he was there in 1865.

Dr. Mudd was not a subject of much discussion when Robert was growing up, despite many happy visits to the Mudd farm as a youngster. As an adult, he learned more about Dr. Mudd's involvement in the Lincoln assassination story, and decided to conduct additional research into Dr. Mudd's life. The Assassin's Doctor contains information about Dr. Mudd's life never reported before.

Robert's second book, Maryland's Black Civil War Soldiers, is the story of Maryland's 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. In addition to a history of the regiment's actions during the Civil War, the book includes short biographies of each of the thousand soldiers in the regiment. Anyone conducting genealogical research on these soldiers will find this information invaluable.

This large book was a ten year project, requiring the personal review of the soldiers' military and pension files at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C. The regiment was organized and trained at Camp Stanton, only ten miles from Dr. Mudd's farm. Most of the soldiers were former slaves from farms in southern Maryland and the eastern shore of Maryland. Some had been slaves on Mudd family farms.