Miss Alcott's E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds, Kit Bakke

“Shouldn’t life be more than simply showing up? Is it enough to be part of a family, make another family, earn your living and he quietly exit? Or should we engaged and be engaged in a few acts of purposeful shaking and shoving along the way.” With a jacket flap that reads thus who can resist?

The book demands that you suspend your imagination a little and picture modern-day Kit Bakke corresponding with one of her heroes (and mine, too!) Louisa May Alcott. It’s all very “The Lakehouse.” It’s part-epistolary novel and part-collection of essays arranged chronologically about the life and times of Ms Alcott. The essays are thoroughly researched and incredibly fact-heavy, but Bakke’s fluid style and beautiful language keep it from reading like a text book.

Though mired with poverty, her childhood was magical and stimulating. Their home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts was next door to Nathaniel Hawthorne and across the street from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David Thoreau, too, was a regular guest of the Alcott's.

I didn’t much like the Louisa May Alcott presented in the “letters.” The real Louisa, the subject of the essays, seemed infinitely more interesting.

It’s shameful how little I know of Alcott when she lived such an interesting life and did far more important things than write Little Women. She was a revolutionary and a reformer who devoted her time, energy and money, when she finally made money, to different causes. She played a huge role, as huge a role as a young woman could, in the abolitionist cause and, later, she became one of the most prominent figures of the suffrage movement. She was also good friends with Frances Hodgson Burnett (Secret Garden). She wrote “sleazy” dime novels early in her career under a pseudonym and had a European love affair with a younger man. What a truly amazing woman!

The book aims to introduce readers to this little known side of Louisa, to go past her most famous work. She herself hated the fame Little Women brought her and the fact that none of her other, more important work received half as much buzz. Story has it that Little Women, which she so famously based on her own family life (she was Jo March) only took one draft.

Well, I’m such a fan of Little Women, I couldn’t get past it. I wish the book devoted more pages to the story behind it. We were all supposed to identify Jo March, of course and hate Amy because she not just stole Laurie, but Europe, too. As much as I love Jo, I always secretly felt more of an Amy.

Amy is based on the youngest Alcott sister, May, who went on to become an artist. She got married and died in her beloved Europe. After Louisa, she’s the most “accomplished” Alcott sister. Although, as their father pointed out Ana (Meg, in the book) sired sons and nothing beats that. The real-life Amy is definitely more sympathetic than the book version. She shared a close bond with Louisa during her life time. Thanks to the book I no longer feel bad about being an “Amy” instead of a “Jo.”

I enjoyed this book immensely.



Yours for reforms of all kinds (that’s how Louisa signed most of her letters),

Me, a proud and out Amy March-Lawrence