In Dreams Awake

I borrowed this book from the library, but now I wish I had bought it, I wanted to mark it up so bad. If you're at all a fan of Little Women, you will want to read this novel. The author did a great job of mixing fact and fiction. I want to believe that this is how Miss Alcott spent the summer of 1855. I'm especially attached to this era in history, after taking a course on Thoreau and the transcendentalists in college and spending a lot of time in Concord, MA, I just fell in love with the whole Concord gang. Bronson Alcott was always a bit of a mystery to me, so it was a treat to see him as a character. It's interesting that Kelly McNees found every LMA biography to be a different interpretation of her. That's probably how she was viewed in life, misunderstood. I think there's a bit of Louisa May in all of us. Highly recommend!


Two of the many passages I wanted to mark:

"Tragedy cannot be measured out and compared on a scale. Loss is loss. And you can never be sure how one is affected. I may speak plainly of these events, but let me assure you, my grief is quite alive just below the surface. It's only that I've learned not to let quite so many of my feelings show."

"The dainty ones look pretty in a sitting room, ma'am, but when a woman is making her way in the world on her own, she must resolve to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her."