The Wreckage of Eden is a huge and dark fresco of an army chaplain’s journey through very difficult and troubling periods of American history (normally denied us in school), and all the while this fine angle of approach is like a slow cinematic zoom and track onto an elusive Emily Dickinson ensconced in her Amherst.
— The Brothers Quay, award-winning film directors
The Wreckage of Eden
When U.S. Army chaplain Robert Winter first meets Emily Dickinson, he is fascinated by the brilliance of the strange girl immersed in her botany lessons. She will become his confidante, obsession, and muse over the years as he writes to her of his friendship with the aspiring politician Abraham Lincoln, his encounter with the young newspaperman Samuel Clemens, and his crisis of conscience concerning the radical abolitionist John Brown. Bearing the standard of God and country through the Mexican War and the Mormon Rebellion, Robert seeks to lessen his loneliness while his faith is eroded by the violence he observes and ultimately commits. Emily, however, remains as elusive as her verse on his rare visits to Amherst and denies him solace, a rejection that will culminate in a startling epiphany at the very heart of his despair.
Powerfully evocative of Emily Dickinson’s life, times, and artistry, this fifth stand-alone book in The American Novels series captures a nation riven by conflicts that continue to this day.
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Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781942658382
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781942658399
Norman Lock discusses The Wreckage of Eden with Publishers Weekly.
Norman Lock is the author of The Old Man and the Heath: A Novel and Stories (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press in March 2027), the dozen volumes of The American Novels series, the short story collection Love Among the Particles, and additional novels, short fiction, poetry, and stage and radio plays. Among other honors, he has won The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and has been longlisted three times for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
visit author page »Praise for The Wreckage of Eden
The lively passages of Emily’s letters are so evocative of her poetry that it becomes easy to see why Robert finds her so captivating. The book also expands and deepens themes of moral hypocrisy around racism and slavery. . . . Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock’s thought-provoking series continues to impress.
This beautifully written novel provides a new perspective on the 19th century and it’s charming to imagine the character of Emily Dickinson as Norman Lock has written her.
— Amanda Holmes Duffy, Politics and Prose Bookstore (Washington, DC)