Brilliant, ambitious, enigmatic Emily Dickinson has set her sights on no less a goal than to write poems that will be read through the ages. But in mid-nineteenth-century Amherst, gossip spreads about her mysterious ways. Nothing, it is said, can draw the secretive poet out of her upstairs bedroom in the yellow brick house known as The Homestead - until a kindred spirit arrives in the form of young Miranda Chase, a girl who has just moved to town with her father, a newly minted Amherst College professor. Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing New England, the two young women soon form a surprising friendship that will utterly transform them both.Drawn to Emily's love of language, her fiery intelligence, and her refusal to abide by the rules of a stifling society, Miranda visits The Homestead every Monday afternoon. Their widely ranging conversations - about books, poems, the looming war, the lives of women - inspire and animate Miranda. But there is a cost to friendship, she soon learns; unexpected proprieties and long-seething family tensions can make tea in a parlor feel like a path through hidden snares. Seeking solace in a world beyond the small confines of Amherst - and in the arms of a dashing suitor - Miranda soon finds all her dearly held convictions put to the test. Read Less