The World That We Are - by Andrew Furman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In 1837, a young Henry David Thoreau sets out to lead an extraordinary life in Concord, Massachusetts, combating formidable obstacles. He struggles to find work as a teacher, to discover his voice as a writer, and to realize true friendship and romantic love, battling all the while against the " family disease" that threatens his health. When a captivating young woman arrives in town, she ignites a tumultuous love triangle with Thoreau's brother, forcing matters to a crisis. Meanwhile, David Hertzog, a Thoreau scholar in present-day Maine, embarks on a reflective journey in the autumn of his life upon the unexpected return of his estranged daughter. Her reappearance in town forces him to grapple with their painful shared history and seek a new path forward. Alternating between these two timelines, The World That We Are delves into enduring themes of love, family, the quest for meaningful work, and the search for a true home in the spinning cosmos.

Review Quotes

"I found Andrew Furman's The World That We Are to be a true delight. Thoreau himself becomes totally alive on the page as a person, not an icon. I was struck time and time again by the tenderness of the portrait, the grace of the writing, and the profound impact past lives can have on present ones. A triumph of research and imagination."
--Peter Orner, author of The Gossip Columnist's Daughter

"This exquisite novel follows the lives of one out-of-touch, present-day professor and one ever-relevant thinker of the past (Thoreau!). What results is a generous portrait of friendship, fathership, brothership--and the wild, beautiful effort to save our closest relationships, whatever the cost."
--Leigh Newman, author of Nobody Gets Out Alive

"What an intelligent and innovative tribute to Thoreau, the possibilities of love, and the wonder of the natural world. I've long admired Furman's nature writing, and with his new novel, he adeptly carries the reader from vital environmental concerns (never have I cared so much about seaweed!) and into a sumptuous reimagining of American literary history. Throughout these deftly twinned tales, Furman shares inspired, honest meditation on the sometimes confounding, ultimately capacious chambers of the human heart. The World That We Are is a beautiful book."
--Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League

"Seldom in recent years have I read a novel that brings pleasure in every sentence, every sound. The World That We Are does more than pay homage to Henry David Thoreau. Andrew Furman's carefully researched novel moves flawlessly from past to present, drawing from Thoreau's Journal and other sources to the fictional David Hertzog, a contemporary scholar who--like Thoreau--struggles to anchor his life in love. Hertzog, widowed, estranged from his daughter, lives alone at the outset of the novel. His morning walks through Maine woods and brisk swims across a pond are the closest he comes to joy, or what Thoreau might call gratitude for the "peculiar intelligence" of the earth. His routines take a sharp turn when his daughter, Ellen, shows up unannounced one morning, and the stories of father and daughter, of a wife and mother lost to tragedy, unfold layer by layer, in perfect prose. The World That We Are is a love story with no shred of sentimentality. Thoreau's insight ('How insufficient is all wisdom without love') becomes Hertzog's insight. His life, like Thoreau's, expands from the self to include family, community, a potential lover, and the wide earth which sustains us all."
--James Janko, author of The Wire-Walker

"In this ambitious and brilliant literary work, Andrew Furman follows the lives of a retired scholar of Thoreau and young Thoreau himself, both stumbling to identify "what it means to love at all." With exquisite language, specific to the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, The World That We Are brings each man to eventually discover what world he is, what love he needs, and his unique place in the cosmos. The natural world abounds, birds call needed messages, and the arc of mountains, trees and ponds enriches the landscape of this impressively researched novel."
--Kathleen Novak, author of Come Back, I Love You [A Ghost Story] & other literary novels

"The World That We Are intertwines Henry David Thoreau's formative years with the journey of a modern-day scholar navigating personal and familial challenges. Through this dual narrative, Andrew Furman explores self-discovery, community, and the bonds that define us. With prose that echoes Thoreau's reflections, the novel is a luminous meditation on the interplay between individual aspiration and communal responsibility, inviting readers to pause, notice and reconsider where we stand."
--Adrienne Brodeur, bestselling author of Little Monsters and Wild Game

"In gorgeous pitch-perfect prose, The World That We Are connects the existential concerns and joys of Thoreau and his time, with ours. Like twins separated by birth and a couple of centuries, Thoreau and his counterpoint, David Hertzog, are both deep thinkers and sensualists, alert to every ruffled feather and fallen leaf, both finding solace from the confusion of human relations in nature and home. Cranky loners unite! Simplify! Thoreau and Hertzog have learned what to discard, and what to keep."
--JoeAnn Hart, author of Arroyo Circle

"With lovely and incisive prose and very human characters attuned to the nature around them, Furman 's dual timelines make a compelling case that, even in this increasingly fraught and modern world, our desire to love and be loved--and the challenge of that desire--remains unchanged. Thoreau would approve."
--C.B. Bernard, author of Small Animals Caught in Traps and Ordinary Bear

"'He glimpses in them, or thinks that he glimpses, a perfect reflection of the world that Ellen sees.' So thinks Hertzog, an aging Thoreau scholar, toward the end of Andrew Furman's heartbreakingly beautiful The World That We Are, and it's that perfect reflection, the possibility of such, that gives the novel such power. Moving from the present to the past, from Hertzog to a young Henry David, but always deeply animated by the particularities of place, this is a novel about community, about family, and, ultimately--as is all great fiction--a novel about what it means to live a good life. There is a quiet force here, a subtle wind you don't quite feel until you realize it has blown you over."
--Mark Powell, author of The Late Rebellion

"Andrew Furman has written in his novel, The World That We Are, an extraordinary pair of journeys from two different times: Thoreau's 19th century America, and David Herzog's 21st century Maine. The stories are exquisitely interwoven in chapters that intelligently speak to each other while the reader listens in. The author's rich language and lavish detail of the natural world portray David and Henry simultaneously poised on the edges of the sublimely beautiful and the depths of human loss. Furman has given us a book--the most American of books I have read in a long time--that will transport the reader through this finely crafted story of hope and joy and, especially, love. The Thoreau scholarship is impeccable, the sensitivity to father/daughter interplay gorgeous, and the reader is the recipient of the gift of worlds wisely parsed and engaging. Add this book to your shelf of treasured stories to read and reread."
--Michael Strelow, author of The Moby-Dick Blues, John and Julie and Robert, and other novels

About the Author

Andrew Furman is Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL, and teaches in its MFA program in creative writing. His stories and essays have appeared in such publications as Prairie Schooner, Oxford American, Grist, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Willow Springs, Terrain.org, Solstice, Flyway, and The Florida Review. His many books include the novels, Jewfish (2020) and Goldens Are Here (2018), and the environmental memoirs, Bitten: My Unexpected Love Affair with Florida (2014) and Of Slash Pines and Manatees: A Highly Selective Field Guide to My Suburban Wilderness (2025). He lives in south Florida with his family.