Details

ISBN-10: 195427601X
ISBN-13: 9781954276017
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Publish Date: 07/05/2022
Dimensions: 7.40" L, 4.90" W, 0.90" H

Voices in the Dead House

Paperback

Price: $16.99

Overview

Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott meet the horrors of the Civil War as they minister to its casualties

After the Union Army’s defeat at Fredericksburg in 1862, Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott converge on Washington to nurse the sick, wounded, and dying. Whitman was a man of many contradictions: egocentric yet compassionate, impatient with religiosity yet moved by the spiritual in all humankind, bigoted yet soon to become known as the great poet of democracy. Alcott was an intense, intellectual, independent woman, an abolitionist and suffragist, who was compelled by financial circumstance to publish saccharine magazine stories yet would go on to write the enduring and beloved Little Women. As Lock captures the musicality of their unique voices and their encounters with luminaries ranging from Lincoln to battlefield photographer Mathew Brady to reformer Dorothea Dix, he deftly renders the war’s impact on their personal and artistic development.

Inspired by Whitman’s poem “The Wound-Dresser” and Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, the ninth stand-alone book in The American Novels series is a masterful dual portrait of two iconic authors who took different paths toward chronicling a country beset by prejudice and at war with itself.

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Reviews

Praise for Voices in the Dead House

"Gripping. . . . Distinctive. . . . A haunting novel that offers candid portraits of literary legends." –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A stunning historical novel that brings history and literature together to share a singular perspective on the Civil War." –Foreword Reviews

"Immersive. . . . Lock's uncanny gift for reproducing the literary voices of his narrators goes beyond mere pastiche. This insightful double portrait brings both Whitman and Alcott into sharp focus." –Publishers Weekly

"Lock captures the strong personalities of Whitman and Alcott without glossing over their flaws in this fascinating snapshot of history." –Library Journal

Select Praise for Norman Lock's The American Novels Series

"Shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights." –NPR

"Our national history and literature are Norman Lock's playground in his dazzling series, The American Novels. . . . [His] supple, elegantly plain-spoken prose captures the generosity of the American spirit in addition to its moral failures, and his passionate engagement with our literary heritage evinces pride in its unique character." –Washington Post

"Lock writes some of the most deceptively beautiful sentences in contemporary fiction. Beneath their clarity are layers of cultural and literary references, profound questions about loyalty, race, the possibility of social progress, and the nature of truth . . . to create something entirely new–an American fable of ideas." –Shelf Awareness

"[A] consistently excellent series. . . . Lock has an impressive ear for the musicality of language, and his characteristic lush prose brings vitality and poetic authenticity to the dialogue." –Booklist

On The Boy in His Winter

"[Lock] is one of the most interesting writers out there. This time, he re-imagines Huck Finn's journeys, transporting the iconic character deep into America's past–and future." –Reader's Digest

On American Meteor

"[Walt Whitman] hovers over [American Meteor], just as Mark Twain's spirit pervaded The Boy in His Winter. . . . Like all Mr. Lock's books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield." –Wall Street Journal

On The Port-Wine Stain

"Lock's novel engages not merely with [Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dent Mütter] but with decadent fin de siècle art and modernist literature that raised philosophical and moral questions about the metaphysical relations among art, science and human consciousness. The reader is just as spellbound by Lock's story as [his novel's narrator] is by Poe's. . . . Echoes of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Freud's theory of the uncanny abound in this mesmerizingly twisted, richly layered homage to a pioneer of American Gothic fiction." –New York Times Book Review

On A Fugitive in Walden Woods

"A Fugitive in Walden Woods manages that special magic of making Thoreau's time in Walden Woods seem fresh and surprising and necessary right now. . . . This is a patient and perceptive novel, a pleasure to read even as it grapples with issues that affect the United States to this day." –Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom and The Changeling

On The Wreckage of Eden

"The lively passages of Emily [Dickinson's]'s letters are so evocative of her poetry that it becomes easy to see why Robert finds her so captivating. The book also expands and deepens themes of moral hypocrisy around racism and slavery. . . . Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock's thought-provoking series continues to impress." –Publishers Weekly

On Feast Day of the Cannibals

"Lock does not merely imitate 19th-century prose; he makes it his own, with verbal flourishes worthy of [Herman] Melville." –Gay & Lesbian Review

On American Follies

"Ragtime in a fever dream. . . . When you mix 19th-century racists, feminists, misogynists, freaks, and a flim-flam man, the spectacle that results might bear resemblance to the contemporary United States." –Library Journal (starred review)

On Tooth of the Covenant

"Splendid. . . . Lock masters the interplay between nineteenth-century [Nathaniel] Hawthorne and his fictional surrogate, Isaac, as he travels through Puritan New England. The historical details are immersive and meticulous." –Foreword Reviews (starred review)


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Details

ISBN-10: 195427601X
ISBN-13: 9781954276017
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Publish Date: 07/05/2022
Dimensions: 7.40" L, 4.90" W, 0.90" H
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