The Raven’s Tale by Cat Winters (review)

It’s 1826, and seventeen-year-old Eddy Poe (yes, that Poe) is dying to leave the home of his controlling, penny-pinching foster father, attend the University of Virginia, and finally marry his beloved Sarah Elmira Royster. Eddy loves to write, but in a reality where muses are supernatural creatures that reflect a writer’s true nature and inspire them with words, his muse comes forward as a ghastly “raven-esque creature” who causes a ruckus in his personal affairs by demanding to be seen. As Eddy runs out of money at school, resorts to gambling, and sends his muse away to focus on his education and appease his father, he struggles to declare “discouragement be damned!” and become the Edgar Allan Poe that readers may already know and love. This novel is thoroughly researched, and Winters effectively infuses Poe’s macabre aesthetic into her fictional retelling of his life. Fans of classic literature will delight in the many references to mythology and other poets; fans of Poe himself are bound to enjoy passages written in a similar voice to “The Raven,” as well as the many allusions to his early works. Endnotes include first drafts of Poe’s early poems, an author’s note on factual biographical information, a further reading list, and a helpful list of the literature quoted.