Summary

In the first chapter, titled “Miss Emily Dickinson Demands a New Maid,” we meet the novel’s first of two heroines. Emily Dickinson is quite intelligent, and she lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her mother (also named Emily) her father Edward, and her sister Vinnie. Their maid has recently resigned her post to get married, and Emily, who prefers to spend her time writing than doing household chores, is happy when her father announces his intention to hire a replacement. Next, in “Miss Ada Concannon Is Banished to the Scullery,” we meet the novel’s second heroine, a young Irish girl who works as a maid at a posh household in Dublin with her sister Rose. In “Miss Emily Surveys Amherst,” the novel returns to America and Emily describes her home and...