For the past year, author Holly Nadler has been on an adventure with poet Emily Dickinson.

Ms. Dickinson passed away 130 years ago, but she is very much alive in Ms. Nadler’s new book Emily in the Here and Now, where the poet is revived through a “weird science” government experiment. In the novel, she joins Lucinda Reade, a Dickinson scholar teaching in Amherst, on a Thelma and Louise-like journey around the Northeast. On the road, the two women must escape scientists and government agents, and, perhaps most frightening, take refuge with the professor’s three ex-husbands.

Part science fiction, part comedy and part thriller, the novel has been kicking around in Ms. Nadler’s mind for 20 years.

Ms. Nadler said the novel is part science fiction, part comedy and part thriller. — Alison L. Mead

“I have always loved Emily Dickinson. Once you fall in love with Emily you want to know everything about her,” she said, adding that she has read every biography of the poet that she could find. “And so I wanted to make her come alive for me.”

Last October, Ms. Nadler shared her idea with son Charlie while visiting him in Los Angeles.

“I’ve always had this particular idea for bringing Emily back into this time,” she told him.

His reply? “Cool idea, mom,” he said.

“It was all I needed,” Ms. Nadler said.

And so it began. That morning after breakfast she started writing and completed the first chapter. She finished the book this past spring and it was published by Wellesley-based publishing company Branden Books. Sprinkled throughout the book are snippets of Ms. Dickinson’s poems, many of which Ms. Nadler can recite by heart.

“Emily’s poetry seemed so sweet and a breath of fresh air,” said Ms. Nadler of discovering the poet’s work in college. “I found I was starting to memorize her poetry, I just imbibed it. People who knew me had to put up with me picnicking and falling back on the grass and saying ‘these are the days when the birds come back…’ I was always quoting Emily.”

At a talk at the Oak Bluffs Library last week, the author said she felt Ms. Dickinson’s presence with her during the writing process.

“As I wrote the first draft, I felt my jaw just drop because she really was in the air with me. I was recreating her. That’s what fiction does and ideally reading does,” she said. “It was just such an honor to have that.”

While Ms. Nadler has written several books about the supernatural, Emily in the Here and Now is her first novel.

“Have you thought about making this a series?” asked a guest at the book talk.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” answered Ms. Nadler. “Can you imagine?”