Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne engage in an important discussion in Stockbridge.

The two men, in a party that includes their wives as well as James and Annie Fields, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, hold a picnic on Monument Mountain. When it is interrupted by a sudden thunder storm, they take refuge in a cave and Melville and Hawthorne engage in a conversation that impacts the final version of Melville’s work-in-progress, Moby Dick, which is published a year later.