The House of Hawthorne

From the bestselling author of Hemingway's Girl comes a brilliant new novel about the unlikely marriage between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody. When handsome, brooding Nathaniel Hawthorne first enters their parlor, it is Sophia's eldest sister Elizabeth, who is smitten with him. As the youngest daughter, beset by crippling headaches and endowed with a talent for drawing, Sophia is discouraged by her parents from pursuing a woman's traditional roles. But from their first electrifying meeting several weeks later, Nathaniel and Sophia begin an intense romantic relationship that despite many setbacks leads purposefully to their marriage. Together, they will cross continents, raise children, and experience all the beauty and tragedy of an exceptional partnership. Sophia's vivid journals and her masterful paintings kindle a fire in Nathaniel, inspiring his writing. But their children's needs and the deaths of loved ones steal Sophia's energy and time for her art, fueling in her a perennial tug-of-war between fulfilling her domestic duties and pursuing her own desires. Spanning the years from the 1830s to the Civil War, and moving from Massachusetts to England, Portugal, and Italy, The House of Hawthorne explores the tension within a famous marriage of two soulful, strong-willed people, each devoted to the other but also driven by a powerful need to explore the far reaches of their creative impulses. It is the story of how a forgotten woman in history lived her life and inspired one of the greatest writers of American literature.?