In chronicling Louisa May Alcott's life, Meigs provides a historical account of life in the 1800s. Louisa's personal experiences with distinguished people and important events bring history alive. The Alcott family is close to many literary greats, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. On several occasions Louisa happens to see Abraham Lincoln on the streets of Washington, D.C., and while in England, she sees Charles Dickens and hears him read.

Meigs bases her accurate work on interviews with the few relatives and friends of Louisa who were still alive at the time of the biography's writing, and on firsthand accounts of the Alcotts, such as Ednah D. Cheney's edition of Louisa May Alcott, Her Life, Letters and Journals and Clara Gowing's The Alcotts as I Knew Them. Meigs does not fictionalize events or invent dialogue, and even the reports of the...