MR. EMERSON’S WIFE by Amy Belding Brown

I love historical novels that bring you right into the characters and their times. As you read this one, you can be sure with each line that the author has also studied poetry. Her descriptions, the cadence. Even if you aren’t a philosophy enthusiast as I am (when I can understand it), you would get so much out of this book. You’ll meet the great Waldo Emerson, great as a public figure, and as a writer, but woe to his wife and children. You’ll meet Henry Thoreau and to me, best of all, Loisa May Alcott. I’ve always had great affection for her, not only for her novels–Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys but also for her pluck. Her parents were Transcendentalists who brought their children into the woods to live and almost starved and froze them to death. Bronson Alcott thought nothing of living off of others. How thankful I am that it was Amy’s writing that helped the family survive the father’s indolence.