The Signature of All Things is a weighty novel that comes with equally weighty expectations. Genre: Historical, Literature, Romance, Drama, Mystery, Adventureĭisclosure: If you click a link in this post and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Peopled with extraordinary characters – missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses and the quite mad – most of all it has an unforgettable heroine in Alma Whittaker, a woman of the Enlightened Age who stands defiantly on the cusp of the modern. It soars across the globe from London, to Peru, to Philadelphia, to Tahiti, to Amsterdam. The Signature of All Things is a big novel, about a big century. But as Alma’s careful studies of moss take her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, the man she comes to love draws her in the opposite direction. Alma’s mother, a strict woman from an esteemed Dutch family, is conversant in five living languages (and two dead ones).Īn independent girl with a thirst for knowledge, it is not long before Alma comes into her own within the world of botany. Her father, Henry Whittaker, is a bold and charismatic botanical explorer whose vast fortune belies his lowly beginnings as a vagrant in Sir Joseph Banks’ Kew Gardens and as a deckhand on Captain Cook’s HMS Resolution. 5th January 1800. Alma Whittaker is born into a perfect Philadelphia winter.
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