Love and romance reside at the heart of British author William Nicholson's work, be it in his screenplays (Shadowlands) or in his prose fiction (Motherland). In his historical novel, Amherst, he crafts two love stories--past and present--centered on the poet Emily Dickinson and her vivid impact on other lives.
Nicholson threads the needle of his intriguing, well-plotted narrative with Alice Dickinson, a contemporary 20-something London copywriter whose shared last name with the poet draws her to Emily's work. Alice travels to Amherst, Mass., to research a screenplay she's writing about the real 1880s love affair between Austin Dickinson, Emily's 50-year-old, unhappily married brother, and Mabel Loomis Todd, the 24-year-old wife of an Amherst College professor. Once Alice arrives in the U.S., she boards in the home of Nick Crocker, a handsome, married, charismatic English Literature academic in his 50s. Alice's research into the mysteries of love, fidelity and passion is soon complicated when she and Nick begin an affair that ultimately parallels the intense complexity found in Austin and Mabel's relationship, which was secretly consummated in the home that Emily Dickinson shared with her younger sister, Vinnie.
These tender, revealing love stories are told via alternating chapters. Nicholson draws from historical texts and includes letters along with Dickinson's poems to re-create the longstanding affair between Austin and Mabel--and the significant role that Emily, an enigmatic spinster-recluse, played in their romance, as well as how Emily's ghost permeates the relationship between Alice and Nick. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines