The Signature Of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

 

Alma Whittaker is a lucky woman.  Born in 1800 to a wealthy father who worked his way from poverty to a thriving pharmaceutical and import/export business and to a Dutch mother who valued hard work and intelligence, Alma experienced a charmed childhood.  She was free to roam the large estate, studying whatever caught her fancy and was raised to interact with the finest minds from all over the world at the dinner table.  She grew to be a botanist of the first order herself.

But she also was an unlucky woman.  Standing over six feet tall and broad as a mountain, she possessed few if any womanly charms.  Her adopted sister Prudence was extremely beautiful which didn't help Alma's chances.  Alma yearned for love and marriage but found no men interested in her.  Finally in her fifties, she found a man who loved her but even though they married, the marriage lasted for only a short time.  These personal trials encouraged Alma to, in her later years, travel the world to find the answers that made sense to her.  She ended up developing the theory of evolution at around the same time that Darwin and Wallace did so, totally independent of their work.

This was an interesting novel and Alma a fascinating character.  She found succor and success in the life of the mind but endlessly longed for the human connection that would make her life complete.  The writing is descriptive and the reader can easily imagine themselves in the various locations. It is intriguing to learn about a woman who refuses to put her intelligence and curiosity in hiding and that accomplishes great intellectual tasks at a time when women were considered unable to do so.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.