Darlington's fall
Subtitle: a novel in verse
By: by Brad Leithauser ; with drawings by Mark Leithauser.
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; Distributed by Random House
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 311
Subjects: Entomologists -- Poetry.; Naturalists -- Poetry.; Butterflies -- Poetry.; Nature -- Poetry.
Genres: Poetry.
Description: "The hero of this one-of-a-kind novel is Russel Darlington, a born naturalist and an unlikely romantic hero. We meet him in the year 1895 - a seven-year-old boy first glimpsed chasing a frog through an Indiana swamp.

And we follow this idealistic, appealing man for nearly forty years: into college and over the Rockies in pursuit of a new species of butterfly; through a clumsy courtship and into a struggling marriage; across the Pacific, where on a tiny, rainy island he suffers a nightmarish accident; through the deaths of friends and family and into a seemingly hopeless passion for an unapproachable young woman.".

"Darlington's Fall is ultimately a love story. It is written in verse that - vivid, accessible, and lush - imparts an intensity to the story and its luminous gallery of characters: Russel's rich, taciturn, upright, guilt-driven father; Miss Kraus, his formidable housekeeper; Ernst Schrock, his maddening, gluttonous mentor; and Pauline Beaudette, the beautiful, ill-starred girl who becomes his wife.

Leithauser's embracingly compassionate outlook invites us into their world - into a past so sharply realized it feels like the present."--BOOK JACKET.