The country�'s most noted writers, poets, and artists converge at a singular moment in American life
At the close of the Civil War, the lives of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade intersected in an intricate map of friendship, family, and romance that
marked a milestone in the development of American art and literature. Using the image of a flitting hummingbird as a metaphor for the gossamer strands that connect these larger-than-life
personalities, Christopher Benfey re-creates the summer of 1882, the summer when Mabel Louise Todd���he prot�穢g�穢 to the painter Heade���onfesses her love for Emily Dickinson�'s brother,
Austin, and the players suddenly find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of decorum, restraint, and judgment and a new, unconventional world in which nature prevails
and freedom is all.
