“Dear Henry” appears in the current edition of The Southern Review, Summer 2018.

“Dear Henry”: Thoreau’s brother John died in his arms from tetanus. The loss threw him into a depression so deep that he developed all the symptoms of lock-jaw. The epigraph is from The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

To begin to understand how Thoreau has been misunderstood, read this interview with Laura Dassow Walls, author of a magnificent new biography of Thoreau.