Brown once again shows a gift for shedding light on historical women. A graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, she received her MFA from Vermont College and now lives. A New England history enthusiast, Amy was infused at an early age with the region's outlook and values. At once an outsider and a woman intimately immersed in the Dickinson household, Margaret paints a shrewd picture of the family’s personalities, customs, and complexities. Amy Belding Brown is the author of historical novels, including the USA Today bestselling Flight of the Sparrow, and Mr.

Married to a United Church of Christ minister and the mother of four grown children, she lives in Vermont. When Emily, distraught over her lack of literary success, considers destroying her poems, she gives them to Margaret on condition that she burn them after Emily’s death. Amy Belding Brown’s work has appeared in Yankee, Good Housekeeping, American Way, The Worcester Review and other national, international, and regional magazines. In this extraordinary book, Amy Belding Brown has brought the 19th century to life. Over the course of her 30 years with the Dickinsons, Margaret’s bond with Emily steadily deepens: she comes to revere the poet’s imagination and literary gifts, while Emily depends on Margaret’s loyalty and forthrightness. Afraid to put her family at risk, Margaret surrenders, and by the time Edward dies in 1874, Margaret feels too rooted in the family’s life to leave. Edward soon informs Margaret she has grown essential to his family, and hints that if she leaves, he will have her brother-in-law fired from his railroad job.

Since she plans to soon join her brothers in California, she’s untroubled by his daughter Emily’s reclusiveness and eccentricities. Maher becomes a servant in the Amherst, Mass., household of affluent Edward Dickinson in February 1869. Brown ( Flight of the Sparrow) crafts an enjoyable story out of what is known about Margaret Maher, the Irish maid who preserved Emily Dickinson’s poems for posterity.

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