The Passages of H.M.

The opening of this fictional novel about Herman Melville features an aging, angry, and drunken man who is wreaking havoc in his unhappy New York home. Decades past his flourishing career as a bestselling writer, he expected his epic novel, Moby Dick, to make him immortal but critics scoffed and readers fled. But, within him is perhaps one great work: the story of a handsome sailor in the Napoleonic Wars, undone by one moment of uncontrollable rage.