From Powells.com
Our favorite books of the year.
Staff Pick
With his debut novel, The Whale, Beauregard gives us a historical romance from a seldom-seen viewpoint. This is a novel about a tortuous, tempestuous love affair between two of American literature's greatest writers, a romance found buried deep within these authors' actual letters and journals. The Whale is beautifully written, well-researched, and one of the best novels I've read in quite some time. I can't recommend it enough. Recommended By Gary L., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A rich and captivating novel set amid the witty, high-spirited literary society of 1850s New England, offering a new window on Herman Melville’s emotionally charged relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and how it transformed his masterpiece, Moby-Dick.
In the summer of 1850, Herman Melville finds himself hounded by creditors and afraid his writing career might be coming to an end — his last three novels have been commercial failures and the critics have turned against him. In despair, Melville takes his family for a vacation to his cousin’s farm in the Berkshires, where he meets Nathaniel Hawthorne at a picnic — and his life turns upside down.
The Whale chronicles the fervent love affair that grows out of that serendipitous afternoon. Already in debt, Melville recklessly borrows money to purchase a local farm in order to remain near Hawthorne, his newfound muse. The two develop a deep connection marked by tensions and estrangements, and feelings both shared and suppressed.
Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne, and Mark Beauregard’s novel fills in the story behind that dedication with historical accuracy and exquisite emotional precision, reflecting his nuanced reading of the real letters and journals of Melville, Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others. An exuberant tale of longing and passion, The Whale captures not only a transformative relationship — long the subject of speculation — between two of our most enduring authors, but also their exhilarating moment in history, when a community of high-spirited and ambitious writers was creating truly American literature for the first time.
Review
"Absorbing.... Drawing from Melville’s letters, Beauregard offers up not only an inventive, fictional take on the deeply felt relationship between the two writers but also a sharp examination of the very real struggles Melville faced creatively and financially. For lovers of biography-driven historical fiction and American literary classics." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Beauregard’s skill as a novelist is such that he describes the intellectual, emotional, and physical attraction between two nineteenth-century men in a way that’s both moving and convincing. The Whale demonstrates that sometimes the only way to reach the truth of the human heart, as when voices from the past have been silenced or lost, is through the storyteller’s imagination." Gay & Lesbian Review
Review
"With scholarly precision, Beauregard assembles a world and constellation of characters out of painstaking and minute details.... The author shows a deft hand in unifying a compelling plot line with primary source material." Harvard Review
Review
"Did Herman Melville write Moby-Dick because he was driven by a passion for Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated the novel?... Some Melville scholars long have wondered whether two of American literature’s founding fathers had more than a close friendship and admiration for one another.... In The Whale, desire for Hawthorne sparks the midcentury creative fervor that produced Melville’s maritime saga." The Wall Street Journal
Review
"The Whale is fiction, of course, although the author is careful to depart as little as possible from the historical record, but the accuracy of the premise is of less interest than Beauregard’s immense skill in rendering Melville’s inner voice — an impressive feat of authorly ventriloquism. Beauregard has captured the true hide and grit of that God – and nature-haunted 19th-century mind in all its rough, baroque, oddly tender poetry." The Washington Post
About the Author
Mark Beauregard has been a journalist, magazine editor, and, most recently, manager of nonprofit arts and community organizations. He has lived in many places throughout the United States and in Europe and currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.