About Whitman Days, Opium Nights: Walt Whitman's emerging career as a poet in 1857 is endangered by a murderous blackmailer who threatens to reveal his life as a gay man. The repressed sexual nature of the Victorian age is seen through the eyes of a young department store heir who becomes enamored with Walt and begins to question his own sexuality. Many real-life figures of that turbulent time are brought to life in the novel, which should appeal to a spectrum of readers who enjoy historical saga and an appreciation of Walt Whitman.
