Book excerpt: She was Emily Dickinson’s maid, her confidante, her betrayer… and the savior of her legacy. An evocative new novel about Emily Dickinson's longtime maid, Irish immigrant Margaret Maher, whose bond with the poet ensured Dickinson's work would live on, from the USA Today bestselling author of Flight of the Sparrow, Amy Belding Brown. Massachusetts, 1869. Margaret Maher has never been one to settle down. At twenty-seven, she's never met a man who has tempted her enough to relinquish her independence to a matrimonial fate, and she hasn't stayed in one place for long since her family fled the potato famine a decade ago. When Maggie accepts a temporary position at the illustrious Dickinson family home in Amherst, it's only to save money for her upcoming trip West to join her brothers in California. Maggie never imagines she will form a life-altering friendship with the eccentric, brilliant Miss Emily or that she'll stay at the Homestead for the next thirty years. In this richly drawn novel, Amy Belding Brown explores what it is to be an outsider looking in, and she sheds light on one of Dickinson's closest confidantes—perhaps the person who knew the mysterious poet best—whose quiet act changed history and continues to influence literature to this very day.