It's the early 1850s, and young New Yorker Joel Payne has been sent to live with relatives in Concord, Massachusetts, for a year. He attends the local school and he helps out in his uncle's general store. He also meets and is mesmerized by resident Henry David Thoreau. Joel goes on walks with the naturalist, and he practices Latin lessons with the Harvard graduate. As a result, his stay in Concord turns out to be much better than he had anticipated.

Thoreauvians and general historians may cringe at the number of factual inaccuracies in this work of fiction. But _The Wayfarer's Tree_ isn't the kind of book that most young people pick up these days. If one of them does, and reads and enjoys it and wants to learn more about Thoreau, then the effort is worthwhile and the errors relatively harmless.

There are biographies of Henry David Thoreau, and there are literary criticisms about Walden and his other works. _Young Man Thoreau_ is closer to the former than the latter. It's a psychological analysis of his early pre-Walden life based on his own writings, records of his life, and remarks made by his contemporaries. Those insights are juxtaposed against Freud's theories and Erik Erikson's life-cycle model of human behavior. And the verdict is that Thoreau experienced a prolonged adolescence with a psychosocial moratorium that delayed the burden of adult responsibilities. His eternal search for a "great man" can be traced to his own family situation, which featured a weak father figure and a domineering mother, so of course the author brings Oedipus into the picture. Further discussion is held about the triangular relationship between Henry, his brother John, and their friend Ellen Sewall, who turned down both brothers' offers of marriage. Henry's reactions to his own accidental fire-setting to the Concord woods and the early death of his brother are also put under the figurative microscope. The result is probably as accurate an examination as we can get, given that the actual man is not here to defend himself or confirm the diagnosis.

And yet the fact remains that he *is* not present. So how can we tell if this analysis, though well researched, is the truth? If you have your own comfortable ideas about Henry David Thoreau, you probably would do well to steer clear of this book. Or read it with a discerning eye, knowing that you'll be shaking your head at some of the suppositions offered. Interesting but not essential.

more illustrations would have helped this out a lot. All in all, a bit wordy.

In this lusty tale of cape cod's lush countryside, Thoreaumanages to do everything wrong! I give it a two only because ofThoreau's thorough description of a beaver frolicking in a pond.