From the award-winning author of Poe the Detective: The Curious Circumstances Behind "The Mystery of Marie Roget" comes a compelling argument for the identity of Emily Dickinson’s true love

 

Proud of my broken heart

Since thou didst break it,

Proud of the pain I

Did not feel till thee . . .

Those words were written by Emily Dickinson to a married man. Who was he?

For a century or more the identity of Emily Dickinson’s mysterious “Master” has been eagerly sought, especially since three letters from her to him were found and published in 1955. In Emily Dickinson in Love, John Evangelist Walsh provides the first book-length treatment of this fascinating subject, offering a solution based wholly on documented facts and the poet’s own writings.

Crafting the affair as a love story of rare appeal, and writing with exquisite attention to detail, in Part I Walsh reveals and meticulously proves the Master to be Otis Lord, a friend of the poet’s father and a man of some reputation in law and politics. Part II portrays the full dimensions of their thirty-year romance, most of it clandestine, including a series of secret meetings in Boston.

After uncovering and confirming the Master’s identity, Walsh fits that information into known events of Emily’s life to make sense of facts long known but little understood—Emily’s decision to dress always in white, for instance, or her extreme withdrawal from a normal existence when she had previously been an active, outgoing friend to many men and women.

In a lengthy section of Notes and Sources, Walsh presents his proofs in abundant detail, demonstrating that the evidence favors one man so irresistibly that there is left no room for doubt. Each reader will decide if he has truly succeeded in making the case for Otis Lord.

The sudden death of renowned American entertainer Will Rogers inspired a national mourning not seen since Lincoln’s death, and it still resonates today. In this intimate and informed recounting, John Evangelist Walsh recalls the events of that day and the plane crash that ended it all.

The plane carrying Rogers and aviator Wiley Post crashed in a lagoon just outside Barrow, Alaska on August 15, 1935. Walsh retells the tragic tale from various angles, primarily alternating between Rogers and Post’s journey and the actions of the two men’s families on that fateful day. In particular, Walsh reveals moving details about the families and their struggle with grief, such as the fact that Post’s daughter was in a stage play about plane crashes at the time of the crash, or how Will Rogers’s daughter Mary never fully recovered from her father’s death and subsequently abandoned her promising acting career.

When the Laughing Stopped is a gripping and poignant retelling of the death of a beloved American legend, and it shines a humanizing light upon a pivotal moment in American history and culture.