Author Bio

If you enjoyed Little Women and are charmed by the magic of the mid-19th century Concord that Louisa May Alcott lived in and wrote about, you might like to read Cathryn McIntyre’s first book, Honor in Concord. 

It is a memoir about the first year she lived in Concord, Massachusetts in an antique home she calls “Quiet House” on a street named for Henry David Thoreau. She had always been drawn to Concord, referring to it in Honor in Concord as “a place that in my soul I had always known”. Years later she will learn why she was drawn there but at this time she struggles to understand what she is doing in this sleepy old town and to better understand herself and her psychic abilities. 

One day she sets out to record the images of Concord’s past that are always on her mind and what results is a fictional story that she tells within the pages of memoir in which the writers of mid-19th century Concord (i.e. Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller and Alcott) are characters living new lives in Concord in present day.  Within the fictional story are windows that open up into their lives in the past.  One moment we are reading about Julie, a mother watching her young daughter performing at her dance recital and the next we see Julie in the past as Sophia Hawthorne, looking out into the yard as her children run about in play. We read about Sarah who is having a flirtatious lunch at the West Street Grill in Boston and walking across the same floor where she once stood as Margaret Fuller conducting her “conversations”.  

These are delicious moments, beautifully written that capture the magic of this town that holds such a place in American history. It is the place where the revolutionary war began out near the North Bridge and the place where some of America’s greatest writers and thinkers once lived as neighbors and friends in the mid-19th century.  

In Honor in Concord, they are back in present day Concord. Julie is Sophia and her husband, Richard, is Hawthorne. He is strong and tall and as handsome as ever but a lawyer now who still writes when he can but is no longer interested in sharing his words with the world. Thoreau is also there as their son, Alex, a bright, independent, and thoughtful young man, preparing for graduation from high school and being pressured to choose a college far away from Concord, the town he so loves. His best friend, John, is the brother he lost in his life as Thoreau, now they are together again. Emerson is there, too, as Julie’s wise but aged father, and this time he is spending his life with Ellen Tucker,  his first wife who so tragically died young in his life in the past. Bronson Alcott has also returned as a wise old sage in the form of Richard’s neighbor and best friend, Ed, who appears to be the most insightful of them all in this scenario where they find themselves reevaluating their lives and questioning the choices they have made. 

The honor in Honor in Concord is in learning to honor ourselves and to trust in our own ability to connect with what Thoreau called the divine.  That message is expanded upon in The Thoreau Whisperer as the author’s story resumes six years after the moment atop Author’s Ridge at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord that concludes Honor in Concord.  McIntyre is there attempting to connect psychically with the authors who are buried there, but where that scene in Honor in Concord is mostly playful, in The Thoreau Whisperer, she is actually doing it and it is serious and powerful and impossible even for her to believe. 

Note:  Honor in Concord is available in both hard and softcover editions from Barnes & Noble; amazon; and other internet booksellers.  It can also be ordered through your favorite local bookseller.  It is not currently available as an e-book.  The Thoreau Whisperer is in some ways a sequel to Honor in Concord but it is not necessary to read Honor in Concord first.  The Thoreau Whisperer is available in paperback and ebook format from Barnes & Noble; amazon; and other internet booksellers.