The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

Title: The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott
Author: Kelly O'Connor McNees
Genre: Historical Fiction 352 pages
Amy Einhorn Book/Putnam
ISBN 9780399156526
Putnam Adult 18 - and up

Publisher's review:
"Millions of readers have fallen in love with Little Women. But how could Louisa May Alcott-who never had a romance-write so convincingly of love and heart-break without experiencing it herself?
Deftly mixing fact and fiction, Kelly O'Connor McNees imagines a love affair that would threaten Louisa's writing career-and inspire the story of Jo and Laurie in Little Women. Stuck in small-town New Hampshire in 1855, Louisa finds herself torn between a love that takes her by surprise and her dream of independence as a writer in Boston. The choice she must make comes with a steep price that she will pay for the rest of her life."

My Review:
From an early age I was a fan of Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women," where the four wonderfully distinct March sisters--Meg, Amy, Beth, and feisty Jo--share the joys and sorrows of growing up helping their "Marmee" while their father is away at the Civil War. When TLC Book Tours offered me a chance to be part of a book blog tour for "The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott," I was very excited and happy for the opportunity to review it.

It is no secret that Alcott based "Little Women" on her own early life, and that she was the sister "Jo" in it. As author Kelly O'Conner McNees points out so well in her novel, Louisa's family was poor in worldly goods, primarily due to her father, the transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, whose philosophical pursuits never provided adequately for the Alcott family.  His wife, Abigail May Alcott, known as Abba, is kind hearted and self sacrificing, but also overwhelmed raising four girls basically by herself, while her husband was out hobnobbing with eminent male authors of the time, such as Emerson and Thoreau. Louisa helped to support herself and her sisters with “woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant, but she had a passionate love of writing, especially for her dashingly adventurous "blood and thunder" tales.

McNees skillfully weaves her novel around the summer of 1855, when Louisa is twenty two years old and the Alcott family has just moved to a house in Walpole, New Hampshire. The house was loaned to them by an uncle, who was sympathetic of their poverty.  Louisa is desperately planning ways to achieve her independence from womanly chores, so that she can devote herself to writing full time, when she meets the fictional Joseph Singer, a handsome and confident shopkeeper's son. He impresses her with his literary knowledge and with his mutual admiration for Walt Whitman.  Whitman's revolutionary style of poetry, "Leaves of Grass," was released that summer, and the author imagined that Louisa would have secretly read it and have been influenced by it.  McNees entwines Louisa's and Joseph's initial feelings of attraction and love with Louisa's powerfully driven desire to remain independent and vanquish her family's debt with her writings. As I read the novel I found myself wishing Louisa could have the fulfillment of marriage and a career as an author, but I knew she would have to chose one over the other, or ultimately lose both.

"The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott" is the perfect book to read this summer as an escape back into the world of  "Little Women."  This time it is more of an adult version, where the realities of the Alcott family lives are more honestly portrayed, and where Louisa is even more headstrong and determined than she was as her character "Jo," but no less endearing.  I highly recommend it as an easy, descriptive and totally enjoyable book to read!

Biography of the author Kelly O'Conner McNees from her web site:

"Kelly O’Connor McNees is a former editorial assistant and English teacher. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived in New York, Rhode Island, and Ontario and now resides with her husband in Chicago. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott is her first novel."


Please visit Kelly's web site to read more about her book, Louisa May Alcott, and to find a list of her readings and book signings.

Kelly will also be visiting my blog today, so if you have any questions about her book, or Louisa May Alcott in general,  please write them in your comments and hopefully Kelly will see them today and answer them.

Thanks, Kelly, for a wonderfully crafted book--I look forward to your next novel!

Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from TLC Book Tours for my review and was not otherwise compensated for my participation in their online book tour for this novel.  

To see a list of more blog book tour reviews for this book click here

A Rare Glimpse of a Tiffany Window in Green-Wood Cemetery

Brooklyn, New York's, Green-Wood Cemetery dates back to 1838 and was named a National Historic Landmark for its art, architecture, landscaping and history. Its scenic winding paths are lined with trees, hills and ponds.

It was a popular tourist attraction in the 1850s and it was the place where most famous New Yorkers who died during the second half of the nineteenth century were buried.  The New York Times said in 1866 that was the "ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the (Central) Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood."

It is still an operating cemetery with approximately 560,000 graves. In Spring it's 478 acres, which are open to the public to drive through or stroll around, are full of beautiful mature flowering trees

This is the mausoleum of Marcus Daly, 1841 - 1900. Daly was a wealthy Montana copper mine owner.  He had emigrated from Ireland at age fifteen, penniless and without much education. By age 20 he had moved West and worked in silver mines in California and Nevada, and eventually became a prospector for a mining company and found silver mines in Montana. In 1881 he found a massive copper vein in the Anaconda mine of which he had become part owner.  The value of copper at the time was high, as it was needed for the recently invented electric light bulb.   By finding financiers to help build a smelter in Butte, Montana, to process the copper in the mine he was part owner of, Daly soon became wealthy and was known as the "Copper King."

On certain special tours and occasions the mausoleum is opened for public viewing.

The interior of the mausoleum is covered with marble.  Daly and his wife's remains are located in a vault in the rear and above is a magnificent Tiffany stained glass window.

The colors of the glass are deep and luminous!  It is hard to believe that this beautiful window is almost hidden away from view for most of the year.

As the sunlight changes so does the intensity of the colors in some parts of the window. 

I took photographs focused on four quadrants so you can see more detail.  All photos in this post can be enlarged by double clicking on them -- use the back arrow to return to the post.

You can see examples of the opalescent glass which is a signature aspect of Tiffany glass. The light shimmers through with a luminous glow.

Louis Comfort Tiffany mastered the art of drawing in glass and incorporated elements of Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and the other international artistic movements of the era. His unique blend of brilliant color and his technological advances in glass brought him international recognition as a great, if not the greatest, glass maker of his time.

The Daly mausoleum even has a transom of stained glass window above the doors.

For all the opulence of the Tiffany stained glass window in the Daly mausoleum,  Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848 -1933), is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in a simple grave on a nearby hill, with just a small  headstone.

photo source

I'm joining "Outdoor Wednesday" on the A Southern Daydreamer blog Click the link to see links to all blogs participating today.