Author Description

As The Passages of H.M. opens, we see, through the eyes of his long-suffering wife, Lizzie, an aging, angry, and drunken Herman Melville wreaking domestic havoc in his unhappy New York home. He is decades past his flourishing career as a writer of bestselling tales of seagoing adventures like Typee and Omoo. His epic but ungainly novel Moby-Dick was meant to make him immortal, but critics scoffed and readers fled. His days have been spent trudging the docks of New York as a customs inspector and contemplating his malign literary fate. But within him is stirring perhaps one great work yet---the story of a handsome sailor in the Napoleonic Wars, undone by one moment of uncontrollable rage... --