“Getting at once to the heart of things: that was the secret. But how many people know it, or had any idea where the heart of things really was?…”

“He could not imagine putting down on paper anything that had not risen slowly to the verge of his consciousness, that had not to be fished for and hauled up with infinite precautions from some secret pool of being as to which he knew nothing as yet but the occasional leap, deep down in it, of something alive but invisible…”

In Hudson River Bracketed, Edith Wharton illuminates the creative process of writing. Vance Weston, a young Midwesterner yearning to be a writer, travels to New York in pursuit of his dreams. On the Hudson River, in an old house called The Willows, he meets a kindred spirit. Halo Spear is the privileged daughter of an old New York family, a lover of poetry and literature who educates and inspires him as he hones his craft. Their journey is beset by money and family woes, the cynicism of commerce and society, the hucksters peddling art and religion—all the obstacles they face in their search for truth—but nothing can dim the light of their connection.

Originally published in 1929.