Followed by the Lark

“A luscious novel . . . [Helen] Humphreys offers a fresh view of a philosopher thought of as a loner, depicting his family home as a place for communion and companionship . . . This is Thoreau as he really lived.” —Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic

A novel as wise as it is tender, a meditation on the miracle of friendship and the heartbreak of change, Followed by the Lark inhabits the life of Henry David Thoreau.

Henry felt his pulse quickening with the lengthening days and the return of the birds, with the leafing out of the trees and the whir of the poplars, the trembling song of the frogs in the marsh.

We mark time and make our mark on the earth, even as everything around us is shifting and growing, and soon enough these marks will disappear. Friendship comes and reorients us to the horizon; loss comes and stretches out into loneliness.

Henry measured and recorded the temperature on and around Walden Pond across the seasons. He built a cabin on its banks and lived there mostly alone—for two years, two months, and two days. He took long walks, floated down rivers with his brother, lost that brother and a friend when they were both still young, read and wrote books, left for the city and came back, heard the romantic whistle of the train transform into the clanging disruption of industry and the destruction of forests hundreds of years grown, watched a young nation rush toward conflict, helped refugees find their next stop on the road to freedom.

Inspired by the life, letters, and diaries of Henry David Thoreau, Followed by the Lark shows how strikingly similar the concerns of the early nineteenth century are to our own, and reminds us to listen for news of change: the song of spring’s first bluebird, reports from those who have heard it, and all the sounds and fearful wonders that come after.