Darlington's Fall — Brad Leithauser

In this one-of-a-kind novel that bends borders, a happy marriage of poetry and fiction, the hero 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, up-right, 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.

In Darlington's Fall, Brad Leithauser offers an ingeniously plotted story and the virtues long associated with his elegant stanzas: wit, music, and a keen eye for the natural world. His independent careers as novelist and poet come together brilliantly here, producing something rare and wonderful in the landscape of contemporary American writing.