Miss Alcott's E-mail

"In this biography, Bakke, a consultant in clinical information systems, initiates an email correspondence with her childhood role model, writer Louisa May Alcott. Together they go "far beyond Little Women," discussing, among other things, Alcott's social activism (she supported women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery). Bakke draws stimulating parallels between Alcott's life in the 1860s and her own background as a nurse and 1960s antiwar activist. Through Alcott, Bakke explores such issues as feminism, war, transcendentalism, nursing the sick, writing, and civil rights. Each chapter begins with a letter from Bakke introducing a new topic, then continues with historical and biographical information about Alcott, her contemporaries, and her times. By mixing Alcott's biography with intriguing phases of her own life, Bakke successfully underscores that social struggles continue. Despite a few inaccuracies (e.g., Bryn Mawr College is not in the Ivy League) and the occasional modern colloquialism, this work is a delight." --Library Journal. "Debut author Bakke's enduring appreciation of Louisa May Alcott inspired a uniquely constructed epistolary bio-memoir in which Bakke and Alcott exchange e-mails across time, many on the subject of how women can maintain a life of purpose while entering middle age. This intriguing and lively imagery correspondence is interleaved with Bakke's historical essays about Alcott's life, which provide a concise biography of the women's-movement pioneer. Bakke also expresses an affinity for Alcott's abolitionist stance, which leads her to gloss over the violent acts of Alcott's great hero, John Brown, just as Alcott did. Bakke also reflects on her own radical past. As a former member of the Weather Underground, Bakke has experience with a revolutionary movement and the controversy it engendered and finds in Alcott a kindred spirit. Alcott fans will enjoy the biographical essays and keen manner in which Bakke assumes Alcott's voice and connects two distant eras. Readers interested in the 1960s protest movement will also find much to consider in Bakke's frank assessments of her own turbulent young adulthood. --Colleen Mondor Copyright 2006"--Booklist. "Primarily a biography of Alcott, the book is inflected by personal correspondence that the author imagines sharing with her. How do they correspond? Bakke isn't sure: she sends emails that Alcott "receives" as letters in the post; Alcott's responses (quotations from her actual writings) somehow come back as email. Bakke's book surveys important portions of Alcott's life, placing it in the context of her neighborhood, of Concord and Boston, and of emerging political and social struggles that would last through the twentieth century into the twenty-first. At one stage or another, Alcott is participant or witness to heterodox views and lifestyles. For instance, Bakke surprises with this tidbit about Alcott's childhood: "In the spring (rural utopias always start in the springtime) of 1842, when she was ten, Louisa and her family founded a commune called Fruitlands."To those who are versed in Transcendentalism, abolitionism, and women's studies, the book may be too ambitious, building a context for Alcott's work but ultimately lacking the space or depth to make connections between that context and the work. But for a general audience, Miss Alcott's E-mail serves as a well-written introduction to Alcott's life and w.