Historical fiction
What Longfellow Heard
A Novel of Love and the Civil War
A novel of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, love, loss, artistic struggle, and the enduring pull of poetry.
2018 Maine Literary Awards finalist for fictionAbout the book
The private life behind a public poet.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was celebrated in his day, yet behind the public poet was a man tested by love, grief, artistic ambition, and the turmoil of a nation coming apart. What Longfellow Heard follows his life from youth to old age, tracing the relationships, losses, friendships, and moral questions that shaped both the man and his work. Set against the nineteenth century and the Civil War, the novel considers the private life behind an American literary icon: the artist at his desk, the husband and father, and the writer searching for meaning after heartbreak. Rich with the atmosphere of Longfellow’s world, it is a story of art, faith, family, and the difficult work of carrying on.
For readers drawn to literary historical fiction, American history, poetry, and lives shaped by art.
Made to be read and kept
A literary life, vividly imagined.
A deeply researched novel for readers who want to enter Longfellow’s world, not simply read an account of it.
- 2018 Maine Literary Awards finalist for fiction
- Built from more than a decade of research
- Love, loss, faith, and art in Civil War America
Selected praise
“I really liked it. Henry comes vibrantly to life in these pages, and the way Nappa massages in Longfellow’s poetry and writing process is very deft.”
Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
“Jon Nappa’s Longfellow is remarkable. The book does an amazing job of humanizing Henry. It works brilliantly.”
SHAYE AREHEART, PUBLISHER OF THE SHAYE AREHEART IMPRINT OF CROWN BOOKS, 5/5
Read more reviews →“The captivating historical novel covers the nineteenth-century life and poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”
Foreword Clarion Reviews, 4/5
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