The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s

Abstract

From the Publisher: Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The
Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and featuring
both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans
living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters—such as Thomas
Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner—are wellknown,
while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs.
     The Forest unfolds in brief stories. Each episode reveals an intricate lost world. Characters cross paths or
go their own ways, each striving for something different but together forming a pattern of life. For Alexander
Nemerov, the forest is a description of American society, the dense and discontinuous woods of nation, the
foliating thoughts of different people, each with their separate shade and sun. Through vivid descriptions of
the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Jacksonian America, illustrated with paintings, prints, and photographs,
The Forest brings American history to life on a human scale.