Concord Paperback – April 4, 2021

My only criticism is that this book wasn't around when I was struggling to appreciate Thoreau, Emmerson, and even Hawthorne with his symbol-filled red letter novel. I was in high school and they were in another world as far as I was concerned. But in this book, the author has raised and reinvigorated these literary luminaries from the dead and re-imagined them as three-dimensional characters I wished I could have known. (Confession, I didn't yearn for a closer acquaintance with any of them when I first met them as a teenager. They certainly improved with age, even if I'm not sure I have.) This is a stunning contribution to the study of American literary giants. Great prose and style. Excellent subject matter.

Concord is a wonderful book. Mr. Zancanella captivates your imagination while expertly including research based information about the Transcendentalists in such a way that makes these characters more than historical figures. They come to life as real human beings coming into their own. It was fun to read and hard to put down. The attention to detail and the natural dialog of characters often using their own words taken from their journals and other writings was amazing. I found myself traveling back into time. I would highly recommend.

Actually, if you just like to read well-crafted novels, you should read this book. Just don’t begin to read it as you go to bed, thinking you’ll finish just a chapter or two before you fall asleep. The premise and prose of this novel will seduce you.

I loved this novel and regard it as one of the most memorable literary experiences of the past decade or more. It allowed me to sit in on the youthful conversations of some of the most brilliant thinkers and writers in American cultural history. it is the fictionalized account of the courtships and marriages and family lives, and personal struggles, and political concerns, and literary apprenticeships of the great New England writers of the 19th century. These were the abolitionists, and free-thinkers, and radical transcendentalists who offended their contemporaries and shaped American thought ever since. I didn't want this book to end, and now that I have finished it, I am feeling a little lost without the nightly companionship and stimulating conversation of Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, and young Henry David Thoreau, among others.

I loved this book, and it was inspiring to read from a local author in my area. It was recommended to me at my neighborhood bookstore and I read it quickly because it was hard to put down! The writing style is very immersive, and I found I related with the way the author put us in the heads of the characters. One criticism was it gets a bit too visual in one love scene, and this prevents me from recommending it to most of my friends. Otherwise loved it and I’m looking forward to more books by him!

The book was pleasant to read but not compelling. I thought I was learning about the Transcendentalists and that was enough to keep my interest. However, I lowered my opinion when I got to the Author's Note and read "I've drawn on history while making making certain changes in an attempt to create a story that is involving and coherent. These changes include altering the rate at which time passes, occasionally shifting the sequence of events, slightly adjusting some aspects of geography..." Now it's hard to know what was changed.

This is an extremely enjoyable and meticulously researched novel of historical fiction. Anyone who took American Lit in high school read essays by the transcendentalists; this novel is a very interesting account of their early years.