THE HOUSE OF HAWTHORNE by Erika Robuck

If Erika Robuck were an athlete she’d win MVP year after year for her willingness to push beyond expectations. This was evident in her novel Fallen Beauty. While she plumbed the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, she uncovered a different well of emotion; one that infused her prose with an urgency so powerful, the reader could easily forget he took the time to turn the page. Fallen Beauty illuminated one of Robuck’s finest skills; her ability to meld with her subject. In The House of Hawthorne the emotional essence of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne is so palpable, raw and fluid the reader dances through the pages.

…his face a tempest of confusion and despair, his heart divided between the great truth that is reinforced with each passing year of our lives: one hand is open, overflowing with an abundance of joy and vitality, the other is a fist, clutching a void so desperately that the nails dig holes in the skin. 

Sophia’s imagery is an integral part of who she is: an artist, a painter who can not create fast enough.

Something about the concentration of all that color and power on the point of a brush, instilling life on a canvas with each motion, brings me such ecstasy and torture. I am left breathless at the thought.

Her hunger to express herself creatively may seem trivial today, when so many people appear to be seeking their fifteen minutes of fame. This was not the case in the 1800’s, a time when women were expected to marry and roll immediately into motherhood. Sophia’s quest was a rebellion and a cross to carry when she fell in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Thanks to Robuck’s expert storytelling, the reader comes to understand how every aspect of an artist’s life becomes a choice they may or may not have an easy time living with.

It pains me to acknowledge it, but I do sometimes imagine what my life would have been if I had never entered the parlor that day to meet Nathaniel. […] Would I be a world-famous painter by now if I had not chosen domesticity? Would I want such a thing, when the pressure and art of creation often brought me such physical misery?

Whether you are an artist or not, connecting with Sophia is as inevitable as breathing because we are never separated from her personal point of view. Everything we learn of her past through the present situations draws us deeper into her inner landscape, where the real story evolves.

I am entranced by her figure in a billowing crimson gown, framed by the rays of the sun slipping through flimsy curtains dancing in the breeze. The scent of jasmine has filled the room from where it climbs around the doorways of La Recompensa, and I might be walking the landscape of an opium haze, which I recall fondly from when I regularly took the drug while under a doctor’s care. 

Unlike Robuck’s previous novels about deceased writers, The House of Hawthorne explores the real-life relationship of Sophia Peabody and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Although their love for one another is not threatened per se, their artistic temperaments coupled with the societal restraints and obligations of the time complicate their destiny.

I crumple the letter and throw it across the room. He moves like one stuck in tar pits and I long to drag him out by the collar. I am nearly thirty years old! He is thirty-five! At this age, most women have died from having their fourth child, and most men are widowers, and yet we are virgins! 

Doing justice to these amazing artists is unfathomable to me, but Robuck is at home in the past, in the same way Sophia and Nathaniel are at home with each other. Her talent for lifting the truth from journals, letters and biographical accounts and weaving it into a tapestry of passion so personal it makes you want to fall in love all over again.

When I enter, Hawthorne’s eyes meet mine, and he rises. By the holy angels, I feel my soul at once aflame and reaching through my breast toward him. […] My sphere has never been so disturbed by another’s as it is now, and I know that Hawthorne must feel the same way. 

While The House of Hawthorne is driven by the love of Sophia and Nathaniel, it offers more. The Hawthorne’s circumstances give the reader a chance to examine the compromises and sacrifices needed to attain personal and professional success and to question the limitations and judgments we often thrust onto others without understanding their situation. Their story is also an inspirational wellspring.

“Please, Sophia. You have no idea how your journal has fueled a writing fire in me, one that was in desperate need of kindling. I am on the edge of something.” 

The House of Hawthorne is a history of two unique artists whose love is the Muse with which they create a life most people only dream about. Their commitment and support of each other, shown to us through the heartfelt prose of Erika Robuck, will encourage you to dream bigger and delve into your soul’s deepest secrets to create with the wild abandon you were meant to share.