Description:The best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love traces the multi-generational saga of the Whittaker family, whose progenitor makes a fortune in the quinine trade before his daughter, a gifted botanist, researches the mysteries of evolution while falling in love with an utopian artist against a backdrop of the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. (from NoveList)
Awards:
Booklist Editor's Choice - Best Fiction Books, 2013
NY Times Notable Books - Fiction & Poetry, 2013
What readers of Goodreads have to say:
- the story of Alma Whittaker, who - born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution - bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas.
- sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge
- too much detail, about too many subjects, which made it incredibly drawn out an tedious
- a beautiful, big, thoughtful book
- a sweeping historical and scientific novel....think Barbara Kingslover meets James Michener and Charles Darwin
- storytelling rivals Ken Follett for both creativity and richness...the book features a wide variety of detail on botany...