<p>The anonymous author discovers the most astonishing secret in American literature, complete with priceless manuscripts, in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. Walt Whitman&#39;s shocking secret story and the evidence that proves it have been kept under wraps ever since the war-torn summer of 1864. Ezra and June, a former slave and a poetry-obsessed white woman, are in love, hidden away in a shack. Their chance encounter with the despondent Walt Whitman, at that time a failed, little-known poet, sends Whitman on his way to greatness and births a still-thriving secret legacy that grows to encompass poets and writers across time and continents&mdash;the peerless Rock Creek Gang.&nbsp;</p><p>Lured into the hidden world of the vast, modern-day park by its zany tribe of misfits, the narrator weaves his madcap adventure of discovery along with his telling of Whitman&#39;s secret story to conjure up an American saga: the horrors of slavery and war and the story of two families, one black and one white, bound together by Whitman&#39;s long-cherished secrets and the saving grace of poetry.</p><p>In the present day, the heroes of this vividly imagined novel, a ne&#39;er-do-well booklover obsessed with John Keats and a wizened, homeless black man who recites Langston Hughes, connive to reveal&nbsp;Whitman&#39;s closely guarded secrets and the strange, hidden&nbsp;world of Rock Creek Park. At stake is Whitman&#39;s true legacy and the fate of the narrator and his fellow Rock Creek secret-keepers.</p><p>The novel will delight and surprise non-poetry fans as well as poetry enthusiasts (poetry is experiencing a comeback!), particularly fans of Whitman and the Rock Creek Gang&nbsp;who share his secret legacy: John Keats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Richard Brautigan, Roberto Bola&ntilde;o and Langston Hughes. The first-ever novel set in Rock Creek Park will also appeal to fiction readers among the two million annual visitors to the country&#39;s largest urban park.</p><p><em>Wild Walt and the Rock Greek Gang</em> is a modern-day <em>Dead Poets Society </em>turned on its precious head. &nbsp;A diverse cast of misfit under-represented characters, not at a&nbsp;prep school but in a gritty, hidden world smack dab in the middle of Washington, D.C., give it the same broad appeal&mdash;the power of poetry brought to life for general non-poetry readers. It is&nbsp;a modern&nbsp;American version of literary discovery novels like bestsellers <em>Possession</em> and<em> People of the Book.</em></p>