James Spada

Days when My Heart Was Volcanic: a Novel of Edgar Allan Poe James Spada

Can there be a chasm deeper than the hollow left in a broken human heart? In this by turns romantic, harrowing, and elegiac novel, best-selling Hollywood biographer James Spada turns to a 19th century celebrity--Edgar Allan Poe. Spada imagines six months in the life of the tortured author of some of the eeriest tales ever written. Narrating this story is handsome twenty-year-old student Jeremiah Delaney, an aspiring poet for whom his idol Poe becomes a mentor. The moment Jeremiah meets Poe's beautiful young wife, he falls obsessively, dangerously in love with her. At the same time he is caught up in Poe's downward spiral into depression, alcohol and opium. Both of these factors, one in Jeremiah's control and the other out of it, set in motion a series of events that threatens to destroy him. "I know in my heart that I am as much at fault as Mr. Poe," Jeremiah admits as he begins this reminiscence. "I cannot blame him more than I blame myself for what knowing him made me desire, made me become, made me do."