Inspired by his journals and writing, this moving novel inhabits the life and mind of renowned nineteenth-century naturalist, poet and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau, revealing the deep connections between his time and our own.

Composed in short, compelling scenes, Followed by the Lark is a novel of significant moments in a life, capturing loss, change and the danger and healing that come from communion with the natural world, set against a backdrop of great change and tumult in America.

Renowned nineteenth-century naturalist, poet and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau's connection to nature was tied to his feelings of loss; before he was twenty-seven years old and went to live at Walden Pond, two of those closest to him had died — his older brother John and his friend Charles Wheeler. Nature provided solace for these losses, but the world was changing around him. The forests were being destroyed by the logging industry.

Wildlife was increasingly being slaughtered for profit and sport. The railroad clanged through his quiet hometown. And the catastrophes of the American Civil War were beginning to stir. Haunting in its quiet spaces, Followed by the Lark portrays this tension of nature and progress and its effect on a singular man. It is a novel uncommon in its combination of scope and brevity, in its communion with its human subject and its reflections on an astonishing yet changing world.

Thoreau's life in the early nineteenth century seems firmly in the past, but his time bears some striking similarities to ours. As she explores these intersections in Followed by the Lark, Helen Humphreys elegantly, insistently illustrates how Thoreau's concerns are still, vitally, our own. (From HarperCollins)

Helen Humphreys is an award-winning author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry from Kingston, Ontario.Her 2015 novel, The Evening Chorus, was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award. Her memoir, Nocturne, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Previous novels include Coventry, a finalist for the Trillium Book Award; Afterimage, inspired by the life of British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, which won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize; Leaving Earth, which won the Toronto Book Award; and The Lost Garden, which was a Canada Reads selection in 2003, defended by Mag Ruffman. Her other books include, Machine Without Horses, the book of essays The Ghost Orchard.