Fall of Frost — Brian Hall

ROBERT FROST, arguably America's most well-known and beloved poet, was toughened by a hard life his alcoholic father died young, his sister and one of his daughters were institutionalized, and four of his six children predeceased him. Yet he determined early on that he would not be defeated by his .own misfortune, turning instead to poetry for solace and survival. In this novel, acclaimed author Brian Hall uses the intimate, revelatory voice of fiction to explore Frost as never before. Told in brief chapters, each of which presents an emblematic incident, Fall of Frost deftly weaves together Frost's early life with his final year, 1962, when at the age of eighty-eight, under the looming threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he traveled to Russia determined to meet with Nikita Khrushchev in a quixotic attempt to save the world from nuclear war. The result is a searing, exquisitely constructed portrait of one man's rages, guilt, generosity, and sheer, defiant persistence.