Avi has written several historical novels for young people, with eighteenth-century America being of particular interest to him.

For instance, The Fighting Ground is an account of a day in the life of a thirteen-yearold boy during the Revolutionary War. His experience of battle is harrowing and dispels his romantic notions of combat. Since moving there in 1987, Avi's historical fiction has tended to focus on his adopted home town, Providence. In 1988, he set his ghost story Something Upstairs in Providence; the ghost of a slave haunts an old house.

The ghosts in The Man Who Was Poe are imaginary, products of Poe's feverish, alcohol-clouded mind, but in The Man Who Was Poe, Avi captures some of what early nineteenth-century Providence was like. The Man Who Was Poe also indicates some of Avi's interest in the history of seamanship: There is a daring chase across bay waters...