“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.