With a lyrical style designed to echo Ralph Waldo Emerson's own, "Little Book" continually swings from present to past, from the mind of the legendary literary figure as he muses and broods over the creation of his first book, "Nature," to the major events of his life leading up to that point. The colorful figure of his Aunt Mary, his grief over his first wife's death, his trip to England and Scotland to meet Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle, the mystical flair of his second wife, and more, are painstakingly re-created, and give full meaning to the classic text that launched his career.
