Find out the latest indie author news. For FREE.

ADVERTISEMENT

Jon Nappa
Author
What Longfellow Heard
Jon Nappa, author

Adult; General Fiction (including literary and historical); (Market)

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.
Reviews
Book Jacket

“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.

 

“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

 

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 awardwinning live streaming video network.

ADVERTISEMENT

Loading...