A number of years ago my husband and I visited Concord Massachusetts. We walked around the village and toured Orchard House where Louisa May Alcott lived for a time. As I began reading the book, Finding Margaret Fuller, I was pleased to meet the group of writers that once lived in Concord.
Finding Margaret Fuller is historical fiction written by Allison Pataki. It tells about the life of an early American writer. Margaret Fuller didn’t live in Concord but she visited it frequently. She had a friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. She also knew Nathaniel Hawthorne.
As I read, I felt like I had slipped back in time. I learned about the transcendentalists. During the final four years of her life, Margaret lived in Rome and was a correspondent for Horace Greely’s newspaper.
While Margaret was in Rome an attempt was made to establish a republic form of governance. There was revolution and a siege occurred. The Italian nationalists lost the battle for freedom. Margaret’s book about the Italian nationalists and the war in Rome was lost in a shipwreck.
Pataki’s book takes the reader from Concord to New York, then to Europe and Rome.
The Naturalist Daughter, another book of historical fiction, introduced me to the controversy about the duck-billed platypus. The story is set in Australia and delivers a lovely description of nature.
The story alternates between two timelines—from 1808 and from 1908.
Rose is the daughter of a naturalist who is studying the platypus during the early 1800s. She follows in her father’s footsteps during a time period when women’s participation in science is limited.
In the early 1900s Tamsin is working for a library. Through a series of events, she is made aware of the research done by Rose and her father. The early debate about the existence of the platypus, with characteristics of both mammals and birds unfolds. I was fascinated as I learned about this unusual creature.
An underlying theme in the book is the role of women in science and the importance of their recognition.
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