<p>Themanuscript of this novel was discovered by John J. Healey in a box left by hisgrandfather, Professor Vincent P. Healey, after his death. This engaging workof fiction is a romantic account in which four iconic figures of AmericanLetters play a leading role.</p><p>In thesummer of 1851 Herman Melville was finishing <em>Moby Dick</em> on his family farm in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Surrounded byhis mother, sisters and pregnant wife, it was a calm and productive seasonuntil his neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne lured him to Amherst. There they mettwenty-year-old Emily Dickinson and her brother Austin. On a whim the twodistinguished authors invited the Dickinson siblings to accompany them on atrip to Boston and New York. In Manhattan they met journalist Walt Whitman andWilliam Johnson, a runaway slave, and it was there, despite their efforts tocontrol it, that Emily and Herman fell in love. </p><p>This,for the first time, is their story.</p>