While most readers know her only from her beloved classic Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo’s Boys, her journey to become one of America’s best-known authors was full of twists and turns. The daughter of a prominent educator, her early life was filled with encounters with such notables as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other prominent intellectuals of the day. But her rise to literary fame was marred by poverty and war, and hindered by her unconventional ideas about slavery, women’s rights, and politics.
Author Martha Saxton shows how her transcendentalist father, activist mother, and three sisters not only influenced her worldview, but became the basis for stories of the March family, beloved the world over.