Book summary

In this novel, based loosely on an underdocumented episode in the life of Edgar Allen Poe, John May brings to life New York City in 1845. After the publication of his poem "The Raven" made him famous, Poe moved to the city, where he hung out with the literary world's most glittering lights, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Dana, Maria Child, and Horace Greeley. He also met a poet named Frances Sargent Osgood--and, despite the fact that Poe had a tubercular wife back in Baltimore, the two fell passionately in love, documenting their passion in a series of pseudonymous poems. Their blatant affair alienated most of Poe's supporters, and he slunk back home after a year, outcast and in debt. This version of the events digs deeply into Poe's tortured psyche and makes his dilemma and its outcome agonizingly real.