What Longfellow Heard - Softcover

Nappa, Jon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0998545023 ISBN 13: 9780998545028

Publisher: Nappa Intellectual Properties, Inc., 2017

Synopsis

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was enormously famous in his day. Adults and children celebrated his poems, both in America and abroad. He was the first American poet admitted into the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey in England and was renowned for such works as “Hiawatha,” “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Evangeline,” “Tales of a Wayside Inn” and others. However, his amazing life was wrought with trials and heartaches during an era when America was laboring to grow up without destroying itself in the process. What Longfellow Heard is a powerful telling, in many of the words and musings of the poet himself, of his tragic quest for love and family, his longing for art and fame, and his heartbreaking loss. Discover how his art and faith wrestled within him while he desperately tried to make peace with the tumult of his times. Experience the tragedy of his first marriage, his long road to recovery, and his passion for the woman he pursued for seven years while the nation fractured and his poetry soared. What Longfellow Heard is a novel with profound relevance to our modern-day polarization, increasingly clouded national identities, and the universal aching for peace, joy, and purpose in the midst of conflict and confusion.

About this title

About the Author

J O N N A P PA is an author and screenwriter living with his wife and children on the coast of Maine. His historical fiction novels, Storm Warriors (NavPress) and Storm Survivors (SWI), resulted in the formation of an international organization that has raised over one million dollars in support of humanitarian causes. He has also written teleplays for Hallmark (When Calls the Heart), INSP-TV (County Line and Hawkridge) and PBS.

Review

The challenge: tell a convincing tale in the voice of one of America's most lauded wordsmiths. Talk about setting a high bar for yourself as a writer! But Nappa is more than up to the task. Writing with passion, compassion, wit, and erudition, Nappa delivers a compelling story laced with poetry and real insight into Longfellow's life and his art. Best of
all, it inspired me to re-examine the poet's work, and with far greater depth and
appreciation than before.
--ROY SEKOFF, founding editor of The Huffington Post, and creator of HuffPost Live, its award-winning
live streaming video network.

"Jon Nappa's Longfellow is remarkable. The book does an amazing job of humanizing
Henry. It works brilliantly."
--SHAYE AREHEART, founder/editor of the Shaye Areheart imprint of Crown Books

"It's one of the very few I looked forward to getting back to when I had to put it
down. Nappa offers such a wonderful sense of scene--the death when Clara comes
in, the first meeting with Fanny, that fantastic scene with the landlady and canker
worms. The author shows a great eye for the particularizing detail."
--NAEEM MURR, author of The Boy, The Genius of the Sea, and The Perfect Man.

"One of the main pleasures I have in these pages is the way Nappa brings the flavor
of Longfellow's language into his own prose. The period feels vividly imagined,
from the clothes and the furnishings to the way people speak and write to each other
in letters... The world of this novel is very compelling and made me care about
Longfellow in a way I would not have expected."
--ZACHARY LAZAR, author of Sway and I Pity the Poor Immigrant.

"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, best-selling author of Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool,
Bridge of Sighs, and many others.

Edition details

• Publisher: Nappa Intellectual Properties, Inc.
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0998545023
• ISBN 13: 9780998545028
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 342