The Passages of H. M.. A Novel of Herman Melville

From the author of the international bestseller The Last Station, a stirring novel about the adventurous life and tragic literary career of Herman Melville.   As The Passages of H. M. opens, we see, through the eyes of his long-suffering wife Lizzie, an aging, angry, and drunken Herman Melville wreaking domestic havoc in his unhappy New York home. He is decades past his flourishing career as a writer of bestselling tales of seagoing adventures like Typee and Omoo.
His epic but ungainly novel Moby-Dick was meant to make him immortal, but critics scoffed and readers fled. His days are spent trudging the docks of New York as a customs inspector and contemplating his malign literary fate. But within him is stirring, perhaps, one great work yet-the tale of a handsome sailor in the Napoleonic Wars, undone by one moment of uncontrollable rage .