Louisa May Alcott: a personal biography, by Susan Cheever

"Everyone" knows that Jo March in Little Women is really Louisa May Alcott-- and that her sisters Anna, Lizzie and May mirror the characters of Meg, Beth and Amy. In actuality, the latter more exact than the former. Louisa had much more fascinating life as well as a troubled relationship with her father, the philosopher, Utopian, and progressive educator Bronson Alcott (nee Amos Alcox -- a largely self-educated and self-invented man). Perhaps that's why in her famous "book for girls" she keeps him off-stage for the majority of the action. Like her volatile and long-suffering mother, Abba, Louisa had a hot temper, independent spirit, and ended up supporting the family financially and emotionally while Bronson gave his "Conversations," and failed as a teacher, writer, and farmer. Constantly worried by the family's debts (they were often desperately poor and forever being rescued by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who Louisa worshipped), Louisa early turned to writing both as an escape and to put food on the table. Jo lives more or less happily ever after with her husband and boys but Louisa remained unmarried, still worried about her family even after her financial troubles were solved by the success of her children's books, and suffered from a variety of ailments until her early death at 55. Susan Cheever, despite her pedigree (she's John Cheever's daughter) isn't a particularly engaging writer, but the book couldn't help being interesting because of the many well-known people in Alcott's circle (Thoreau, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller) and her involvement in the Civil War, as a nurse, in civil rights, abolitionism, and women's suffrage. 257 pp.