Emily’s House

Brown (Flight of the Sparrow) crafts an enjoyable story out of what is known about Margaret Maher, the Irish maid who preserved Emily Dickinson’s poems for posterity. Maher becomes a servant in the Amherst, Mass., household of affluent Edward Dickinson in February 1869. Since she plans to soon join her brothers in California, she’s untroubled by his daughter Emily’s reclusiveness and eccentricities. Edward soon informs Margaret she has grown essential to his family, and hints that if she leaves, he will have her brother-in-law fired from his railroad job. Afraid to put her family at risk, Margaret surrenders, and by the time Edward dies in 1874, Margaret feels too rooted in the family’s life to leave. Over the course of her 30 years with the Dickinsons, Margaret’s bond with Emily steadily deepens: she comes to revere the poet’s imagination and literary gifts, while Emily depends on Margaret’s loyalty and forthrightness. When Emily, distraught over her lack of literary success, considers destroying her poems, she gives them to Margaret on condition that she burn them after Emily’s death. At once an outsider and a woman intimately immersed in the Dickinson household, Margaret paints a shrewd picture of the family’s personalities, customs, and complexities. Brown once again shows a gift for shedding light on historical women. (Aug.)