MISS ALCOTT’S E-MAIL
Yours for Reforms of All Kinds
In searching for the answers to life’s enduring questions, Kit Bakke sends an e-mail to her heroine, Louisa May Alcott and is amazed to receive a reply. Their correspondence – a mixture of biography, history and autobiography – becomes an intertwined dance of ideas and stories, bridging the mix-1800s and the twenty-first century. Together, they discuss issues of women’s rights, the obligation to help the sick and needy, and the moral and personal responsibility to resist injustice and initiate reform.
For Kit Bakke, Alcott is considerably more than the author of Little Women. “Her abolitionist zeal,
In searching for the answers to life’s enduring questions, Kit Bakke sends an e-mail to her heroine, Louisa May Alcott and is amazed to receive a reply. Their correspondence – a mixture of biography, history and autobiography – becomes an intertwined dance of ideas and stories, bridging the mix-1800s and the twenty-first century. Together, they discuss issues of women’s rights, the obligation to help the sick and needy, and the moral and personal responsibility to resist injustice and initiate reform.
For Kit Bakke, Alcott is considerably more than the author of Little Women. “Her abolitionist zeal, her women’s rights advocacy, her hospital work, her crazy commune days, her heartfelt desire to leave her world in a better place, her humor and energy all materialized in front of me,” writes Bakke. “Louisa was serious when she signed her letters, ‘Yours for reforms of all kinds’. She made her life, she didn’t just live it.”
- David R. Godine
- Paperback
- September 2007
- 288 Pages
- 9781567923452
Buy the Book
$15.95
About Kit Bakke
Kit Bakke lives in Seattle, where it doesn’t rain nearly as much as people think. She is a wife and mother of two daughters. Her resume includes stints as a nurse, copy editor, technology and business consultant, street fighter, and revolutionary. Miss Alcott’s E-mail is her first book. She is currently trying to make contact with Dorothy Wordsworth.
Praise
“A great starting point for lively discussion… Bakke’s book reads as an alive and engaged text, giving life to Alcott in creative ways.” —Aimee Houser, ForeWord Magazine
“Brimming with meticulous research and unusual insights, Miss Alcott’s E-mail brings Louisa May Alcott back into our midst, in all her light and dark complexity. Kit Bakke’s fresh new look at Louisa May reminds us that this spirited and brave reformer was by no means a little woman.”
—Geraldine Brooks, author of March
“Bakke’s ‘voice’ is divided three ways, into the brisk prose of the essays and then writings of two very different women, slowly getting to know each other over the divide of a century. The effect is like a movie, shot with a hand-held camera.” —Carolyn See, Washington Post Book World