Kevin Stillwell

Koppagruva Kevin Stillwell

Alfred Nobel, inventor of nitroglycerin and inspiration for the Nobel Peace Prize, visited the United States twice. Koppargruva, from Hugh Coyle's forthcoming book Peace at Last, is a fictionalized account of one of those excursions. Dubbed a killer by American journalists because of recent accidental nitroglycerin blasts in Panama and San Francisco, Nobel faces his tarnished reputation head on while searching for any sliver of redemption.

Ploughshares, the literary magazine of Emerson College.