A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for
knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat
Pray Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls
In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction,
inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love,
adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker
family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker--a poor-born
Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine
trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in
1800, Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's
money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts
herself. As Alma's research takes her deeper into the mysteries of
evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes
incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact
opposite direction--into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the
magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist--but
what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the
workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life.
Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of
All Things soars across the globe--from London to Peru to Philadelphia
to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled
with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers,
astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most
memorable of all, it is 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. Written in the bold,
questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert's wise, deep, and
spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.
