Publisher's Synopsis
Herman Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick was a spectacular failure when it was first published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. He never recovered from the setback, and because he did not make much effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about him, and even less about what he called his "wicked book." Now, Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Shelden sheds light on this literary mystery to tell the story of Melville's passionate, obsessive, and clandestine affair with a married woman named Sarah Morewood, whose libertine impulses encouraged and sustained Melville's own. In his research, Shelden discovered unexplored documents suggesting that, in their shared resistance to the "iron rule" of social conformity, Sarah and Melville had forged an illicit and enduring romantic and intellectual bond. Emboldened by the thrill of courting Sarah in secret, the pleasure of falling in love, and the excitement of s
