NOTE: I was given early access to this book in exchange for writing an impartial review. Thank you netgalley and Ballantine Books. Publication Date: March 19, 2024.
FINDING MARGARET FULLER is a completely captivating, deeply emotional historical novel about a woman I knew little about, but came to love. Awarded five stars on Goodreads.
All I knew about Margaret Fuller (1810-50) before reading this book was that she was a Unitarian-Universalist and closely associated with the transcendentalist philosophy that developed in the 1820s and 1830s in New England. Others in that crowd (all residents of Concord, MA) include essayist/poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), and educator Bronson Alcott (1799-1888 – also Louisa May’s Daddy). Why we have all grown up knowing these names but not Fuller’s is beyond me. (Hmmm, do you think it could have anything to do with her gender?)
For me to say that Margaret Fuller was a genius way ahead of her time must be one of the world’s great understatements:
This image and the six below are from wikipedia
• She was a self-supporting, career woman at a time when lone women couldn’t go anywhere without chaperones and a woman’s only acceptable options were either marriage or spinsterhood. And spinsterhood was really acceptable at all. More someone to be pitied.
• Fuller was a widely published woman author at a time when almost no American women were published.
• She was the first female editor of a major newspaper in New York City.
• She is considered by many (including Susan B. Anthony 1820-1906) to be the inspiration behind the American feminism movement.
And Fuller’s work, success, and travel (through the U.S., England, France, and Italy) put her smack in the middle of many of the most prominent writers, artists, and thinkers of her day. Aside from the names referenced above, she hung out with abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), publisher Horace Greeley (1811-1872), English romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850), writer/critic Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849), French novelist George Sand (1804-1876), and Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849).
Photo from her website
Bestselling author Allison Pataki does a remarkable job of combining rich research, believable dialogue, and creative character exploration — all in the service of making Margaret Fuller come alive as a three-dimensional human being. I even found as I approached the end of the novel that I was stalling – not eager to finish the book. Because I knew tragedy was approaching. So, no surprise, I highly recommend FINDING MARGARET FULLER.
More about the author, Allison Pataki.
You may be interested in my reviews of other books by Pataki (she’s one of my favorites):
WHERE THE LIGHT FALLS (with Owen Pataki)
THE MAGNIFICENT LIVES OF MARJORIE POST
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