Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri


Read by Grant Hurlock

Idomen (1843) is the creative-nonfiction memoir of the beautiful and brilliant American poetess Maria Gowen Brooks, who was compared in the 19th century to Byron and Swinburne. In it she tells the story of an ill-fated love affair she had twenty years earlier while traveling with her young son in Canada following the death of her much older husband. The traumatic breakup led to suicide attempts on her part, which romantic masochist Brooks byronically relates in full, albeit changing everybody's name. Herself she calls Idomen, which is apparently idiomatic Greek for "we shall see" – as indeed we shall!

(Incidentally, the well-traveled Brooks had inherited a plantation in Cuba upon the death of her brother from malaria and went back there to live after Idomen was published, only to die of the same disease herself not long after.)
- Summary by Grant Hurlock (6 hr 33 min)

Chapters

Preface 34:25 Read by Grant Hurlock
Prologue 16:01 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Fireside 13:08 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Stranger 20:37 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Discovery 15:55 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 1 25:55 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 2 23:35 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 3 22:54 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 4 21:59 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 5 23:21 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 6 23:43 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 7 22:31 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 8 23:28 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 9 23:18 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Confessions 10 27:58 Read by Grant Hurlock
The Catastrophe 15:06 Read by Grant Hurlock
Epilogue 16:34 Read by Grant Hurlock
Notes 22:32 Read by Grant Hurlock