The Whale is fiction, of course, although the author is careful to depart as little as possible from the historical record, but the accuracy of the premise is of less interest than Beauregard's immense skill in rendering Melville's inner voice-an impressive feat of authorly ventriloquism. Beauregard has captured the true hide and grit of that God- and nature-haunted 19th-century mind in all its rough, baroque, oddly tender poetry. -The Washington Post

Did Herman Melville write Moby-Dick because he was driven by a passion for Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated the novel? . . . Some Melville scholars long have wondered whether two of American literature's founding fathers had more than a close friendship and admiration for one another. . . . In The Whale, desire for Hawthorne sparks the midcentury creative fervor that produced Melville's maritime saga. -The Wall Street Journal

With scholarly precision, Beauregard assembles a world and constellation of characters out of painstaking and minute details. . . . The author shows a deft hand in unifying a compelling plot line with primary source material. -Harvard Review

Beauregard's skill as a novelist is such that he describes the intellectual, emotional, and physical attraction between two nineteenth-century men in a way that's both moving and convincing. The Whale demonstrates that sometimes the only way to reach the truth of the human heart, as when voices from the past have been silenced or lost, is through the storyteller's imagination. -Gay & Lesbian Review

Half history, half imagination, this intimate look into the household and heart of Herman Melville is a quick, compulsive read. Beauregard's Melville, still filled with hope and preoccupied with longing, is just in the process of wrestling his white whale onto the page. We meet him here with much pleasure, some amusement, and a great deal of pity. And are so happy not to be married to him. -Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Vivid and beautifully written, smart, and achingly sensual, this novel is at once a passionate love story and a gripping portrait of an artist wrestling with himself on the cusp of his greatest achievement. A potent and transporting read. -Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles

A brilliantly conceived, sparklingly written, carefully researched, and moving account of the surprising relationship between Hawthorne and Melville, as well as a credible and poignant story of the sufferings, sorrows, flights of fancy, and plain hard work that went into the writing of a great book: Moby Dick. -Sheila Kohler, author of Becoming Jane Eyre

Mark Beauregard has written an engaging novel about one of the vivid episodes in the saga of American literature. I've always been drawn to the idea of Melville in the Berkshires, with his friend Hawthorne just down the road, and the way their combustive interactions led to the writing of the greatest American novel, Moby Dick. I read this novel with deep absorption. A first-class piece of fiction. -Jay Parini, author of The Passages of H. M.

A fascinating exercise in fictional projection, The Whale imagines what has been lost to the impossible past-the veiled emotional details of the relationship between Melville and Hawthorne. The result is a lively, intriguing, and surprisingly amusing romp through the intimate gaps of literary history. -Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan or, the Whale and The Sea Inside

A touching, stirring, tragic love story, wonderfully researched and compellingly told. The Whale succeeds as all the best historical fiction does, by giving readers fresh new insights about important events and persuading them that if things didn't happen exactly this way, they should have. -Ron Hansen, author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Herman Melville once wrote that 'it is better to fail in originality, th