Edward Everett Hale was a Unitarian minister from a well-respected New England family. His father, Nathan Hale, was the editor of Boston's primary newspaper, the Daily Advertiser; his great uncle, also Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary War patriot whose words "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" are well known to American school children. His mother, Sarah Preston Everett, was from a family of notable Unitarian clergymen; his wife, Emily Perkins, the granddaughter of Lyman Beecher and niece of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Among Edward Everett Hale's childhood and adult acquaintances, friends, and parishioners were such nationally prominent New Englanders as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and William Dean Howells. Hale was not, however, only a regionalist in his experience and concerns nor merely a local colorist in his writings. Among...