While teaching at a Canadian university, ex-pat American English professor Sean O’Hara stumbles on the diary of his great-great-great grandmother, Bridget Ryan. With a doctorate in English literature based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Sean is drawn into Bridget’s story when he discovers that she and Poe were contemporaries, and more than that, it appears they were friends for a time.
The story sweeps us into Bridget’s life in Boston and Baltimore, as we begin to piece together the mystery that still surrounds the final few days of Poe’s life.
Rich in carefully researched historical detail, this book is one answer to what really might have happened to Poe in those last, lost days of his life – and who the mysterious stranger who to this day places three roses and cognac on Poe’s grave every year in the wee hours of the morning on his birthday might be.
