"Mesmerizingly twisted, richly layered." --New York Times Book Review

" Norman Lock's fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights." --NPR

In his third book of The American Novels series, Norman Lock recounts the story of a young Philadelphian, Edward Fenzil, who, in the winter of 1844, falls under the sway of two luminaries of the nineteenth-century grotesque imagination: Thomas Dent Mutter, a surgeon and collector of medical "curiosities," and Edgar Allan Poe. As Fenzil struggles against the powerful wills that would usurp his...

"A Fugitive in Walden Woods manages that special magic of making Thoreau's time in Walden Woods seem fresh and surprising and necessary right now. Norman Lock tells the story of Samuel Long, an escaped slave who encounters Thoreau, with insight and some welcome humor. This is a patient and perceptive novel, a pleasure to read even as it grapples with issues that affect the United States to this day."--Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom and The Changeling

"Portraying the traumatic psychological aftershock not of war but of slavery provides a...