Rating: 4/5Review: This book gives a wonderful inside view of the personal life of Louisa Mae Alcott. Of course, a little of it here and there is merely based on speculation, but there are enough facts to make it interesting. I never realized, for instance, that Miss Alcott was Josephine March. Well, in reality, she was a much sadder version, but she wanted to be like the Jo she wrote about, I believe that. The narrator of the book is a ficticious cousin/friend of Alcott's and the famous author's life is told through her eyes. There were several famous historical figures featured in the novel, which gave it added depth. O'Brien did an excellent job of blending historical facts with her own imaginings of the time period.
Book Description:
From childhood, Susan Gray and her cousin Louisa May Alcott have shared a safe, insular world of outdoor adventures and grand amateur theater — a world that begins to evaporate with the outbreak of the Civil War. Frustrated with sewing uniforms and wrapping bandages, the two women journey to Washington, D.C.'s Union Hospital to volunteer as nurses. Nothing has prepared them for the horrors of this grueling experience. There they meet the remarkable Clara Barton — the legendary Angel of the Battlefield — and she becomes their idol and mentor. Soon one wounded soldier begins to captivate and puzzle them all — a man who claims to be a blacksmith, but whose appearance and sharp intelligence suggest he might not be who he says he is.
Through the Civil War and its chaotic aftermath to the apex of Louisa's fame as the author of Little Women and Lincoln's appointment of Clara to the job of finding and naming the war's missing and dead, this novel is ultimately the story of friendship between women — women who broke the mold society set for them, while still reckoning with betrayal, love, and forgiveness.
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