Book Review: I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died by Amanda Flower
By Doreen Sheridan
December 13, 2023
Housemaid Willa Noble has never been afraid of hard work but the return of Austin Dickinson and his new bride Susan to the Evergreens, the estate directly across from where she works for his parents and sisters, adds unexpected burdens to her schedule. This is admittedly less Austin’s fault than his sister Emily’s. The latter expects Willa not only to accompany her on visits to the neighboring estate, but to assist in readying it for and hosting no less a literary luminary than Ralph Waldo Emerson himself. Emerson has been engaged to lecture at nearby Amherst College, and Susan is eager to show off her skills as a hostess. Never mind that she and her husband have barely settled into their new home. Emily is determined to help her best friend Susan’s dream come true, no matter the strain on her own household.
While Willa doesn’t mind the extra work too much, she does find herself made ill at ease by the inappropriate behavior of Emerson’s assistant, Luther Howard. To begin with, he’s entirely too familiar with the youngest Dickinson sister, Lavinia. Worse, he’s asked Willa to privately pass along some of Emily’s work to him so that he can give it to Emerson to evaluate. Even if Emily weren’t notoriously private about her poetry, Willa would never do something like that without discussing it with Emily first. The two women have become friends and unsurprisingly see eye to eye on many things, including Howard’s lack of trustworthiness. After the latter is suddenly assaulted by a traveling peddler one day, the typically blunt Emily takes him to task for the excuses he offers for the incident:
“Peddlers and travelers like him have to be a little bit off to do the work that they do,” Mr. Howard said in a dismissive way. “[H]e was deranged. It’s the only explanation that can make any sense.” He forced a laugh. “But then again, how do you make sense of a senseless act?”
“That is quite a harsh statement to make about a man that you don’t know,” Emily interjected. “I don’t believe that it is right or fair to make that kind of judgment on the state of any person’s mind, and that is all the more true about someone you do not know personally.”
When Howard is murdered shortly after this, Willa and Emily are drawn into the investigation. Lead detective James Durben is not someone either woman holds in high favor, especially given his reputation for violently extracting confessions from his suspects. Both women find it entirely too convenient that Detective Durben is happy to lay the murder at the feet of the mysterious foreign peddler. But the more they learn about the case, the more sordid business they uncover about some of the most important people in Amherst, and the greater the subsequent risk to their own lives and livelihoods. Will Willa and Emily be able to find justice for the falsely accused before either of them comes to irreparable harm?
This sophomore novel in the Emily Dickinson mystery series is as progressive and fair-minded as the first, with the fight for the abolition of slavery again proving an important touchstone for the book. Amanda Flower also explores how American society of that era continually and offhandedly repressed anyone who wasn’t a “Yankee” male, as foreigners were scapegoated and women writers were told to assume male identities in order to be taken seriously. Many of her incisive anecdotes resonate in modern times, as here where Willa witnesses a conversation between several of Emily’s female writer friends:
“I do enjoy writing. I might even say I love it sometimes, but there is a great difference between writing to live and living to write. I write to live. It’s my livelihood, and I do it under many names and hats to make money. I do not apologize for that.”
Mrs. Thayer placed a hand on her cheek. “But it is art. Shouldn’t it be pure?”
“Art for purity’s sake is the advantage of the rich. The difference is not having money and knowing you have to make your talents work for you. I can’t depend on my father or family to provide for me. They depend on me.”
Smart and salient, I Heard A Fly Buzz As I Died reimagines established history to convincingly present poet Emily Dickinson as a stubborn sleuth dedicated to justice, with Willa as her invaluable partner in detection. I greatly enjoyed the way that both Emily and Willa are portrayed as they fight for what’s right, even as they grow to understand one another better over the course of these absorbing books. Fans of 18th-century American literature will also thrill to the exciting literary cameos, as I certainly did.