SCRIBBLES, SORROWS, AND RUSSET LEATHER BOOTS

A richly detailed account of the life, family, and career of a renowned woman of letters.

Though she goes a little overboard in the sound-bite quote department—as biographers of this author are wont to do since the Alcotts and many of their friends were compulsive diarists and letter writers—Rosenberg generally avoids getting bogged down in fussy details. The result is a fresh and free-flowing character study of “a real-life heroine” gifted not only with versatile authorial chops, but a powerful sense of family responsibility and an uncommonly generous spirit. Family tragedies and Alcott’s own slow death from (probably) mercury poisoning get full play, but the overall tone is relatively bright; her experiences as a nurse in a Civil War hospital are quickly brushed in as source material for her Hospital Sketches, for example. Her various supposed (but never verified) romantic flings get so much speculative attention that Rosenberg’s prim “and in the end it is not our business” is amusingly disingenuous. Likewise, the profitable “gothic and romantic” works, which readers are frequently reminded the subject herself labeled rubbish, are described by Alcott as “gorgeous fancies” on a later page. Still, readers bemused by the contradictions will be no less moved for being entertained. Alcott’s progressive views (and a possible family connection with the Underground Railroad) are noted in the narrative. Chapters are prefaced by Sudyka’s full-page, naïve-style illustrations that evoke the historical setting.

A grand tale for present fans and future ones, too.