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Nan A. Talese
May 2009
On Sale: April 28, 2009
Featuring: Henry David Thoreau
384 pages
ISBN: 0385528655
EAN: 9780385528658
Hardcover
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Fiction | Historical
Woodsburner springs from a little-known event in the
life of one of America’s most iconic figures, Henry David
Thoreau. On April 30, 1844, a year before he built his cabin
on Walden Pond, Thoreau accidentally started a forest fire
that destroyed three hundred acres of the Concord woods—an
event that altered the landscape of American thought in a
single day. Against the background of Thoreau’s fire, Pipkin’s
ambitious debut penetrates the mind of the young philosopher
while also painting a panorama of the young nation at a
formative moment. Pipkin’s Thoreau is a lost soul, plagued
by indecision, resigned to a career designing pencils for
his father’s factory while dreaming of better things. On the
day of the fire, his path will intersect with three very
different local citizens, each of whom also harbors a secret
dream. Oddmund Hus, a lovable Norwegian farmhand, pines for
the wife of his brutal employer. Elliott Calvert, a
prosperous bookseller, is also a hilariously inept aspiring
playwright. And Caleb Dowdy preaches fire and brimstone to
his congregation through an opium haze. Each of their lives,
like Thoreau’s, is changed forever by the fire. Like
Geraldine Brooks’s March and Colm Tóibín’s The
Master, Woodsburner illuminates America’s
literary and cultural past with insight, wit, and deep
affection for its unforgettable characters, as it brings to
vivid life the complex man whose writings have inspired
generations.
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