ABOUT THE BOOK

An immensely powerful story, 'The Night Inspector' follows the extraordinary life of William Bartholomew, a maimed veteran of the Civil War, as he returns from the battlefields to New York City, bent on reversing his fortunes. It is there he meets Jessie, a Creole prostitute who engages him in a venture that has its origins in the complexities and despair of the conflict he has left behind. He also befriends a deputy inspector of Customs named Herman Melville who, largely forgotten as a writer, is condemned to live in the wake of his vanished literary success and in the turmoil of his fractured family.

Delving into the depths of this country's heart and soul, Frederick Busch's stunning novel is a gripping portrait of a nation trying to heal from the ravages of war - and of one man's attempt to recapture a taste for life through the surging currents of his own emotions, ambitions, and shattered conscience.

Since 1971, award-winning author Frederick Busch has published more than twenty works of fiction and non-fiction, including the novels 'The Mutual Friend', about Charles Dickens, 'Rounds', 'Invisible Mending', 'Sometimes I Live in the Country', 'Harry and Catherine', 'Long Way from Home', and the bestselling 'Closing Arguments' and 'Girls'. A compilation of his short fiction, 'The Children in the Woods: New and Selected Stories', was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1995.
His most recent books are 'A Dangerous Profession', a collection of essays about the writing life, and 'Letters to a Fiction Writer', an anthology for which he served as both editor and contributor. A new short story collection, 'Don't Tell Anyone', will be published early in 2001.

Among the many honors his work has received are the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in short fiction, an award for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Jewish Book Award for his novel 'Invisible Mending'. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill, and Woodrow Wilson Foundations and the NEA, and his stories have appeared many times in annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, the O'Henry Awards, and The Pushcart Prize.

Mr. Busch has served as acting director of the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and since 1966 has taught at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, where he is Fairchild Professor of Literature and directs the Living Writers Program. He is also the founder of the Chenango Valley Writers' Conference. Mr. Busch was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was educated at Muhlenberg College and Columbia University.

He and his wife, Judy, a high school librarian, have two grown sons and live in rural upstate New York with their two black labs, Jake and Junior. He writes every day in his studio, located on the second floor of a restored barn on his property.