After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart

Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Marshall (Margaret Fuller; The Peabody Sisters) offers a memoir in essays, reflecting on how writing about others has changed how she sees her own experiences, relationships, and history. The six essays cover a wide range of topics, including Marshall’s thoughts on viewing the remains of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (wife of Nathaniel) and their daughter Una; the three months that she spent living and studying in Kyoto; and her account of Jonathan Jackson, a 17-year-old classmate who was killed in a headline-making shootout in 1970. Throughout these essays, Marshall uses her biographer’s tools—interviewing witnesses, examining documents, checking memories against facts, and contending with separation from one’s subjects. What is gleaned from the assembled leavings is a form of truth, getting to a person’s core—in this case, the core of Marshall herself. The author’s completed narrative is intriguing and unexpected, peppered with insights, and full of meaning.