The Little Women Letters
Touchstone
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Gabrielle Donnelly
Originally published in Great Britain in 2010 by Penguin Books Ltd
Published by arrangement with Penguin Books Ltd
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Touchstone hardcover edition June 2011
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Designed by Renata Di Biase
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Donnelly, Gabrielle.
The Little women letters / Gabrielle Donnelly.—1st Touchstone hardcover ed.
p. cm.
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PR6054.O53L57 2011
823’.914—dc22
2011010094
ISBN 978-1-4516-1718-4
ISBN 978-1-4516-1720-7 (ebook)
For Lydia Newhouse, who had the idea,
and for Harriet Barber, who helped make it happen
Content
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Acknowledgments
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In dating Jo March’s letters and the events in the March family, I have taken as a starting point the only specific date mentioned in Little Women—that of Amy’s drawing up and signing of her will, stated to be November 20, 1861. However, this means that the opening of the book took place in December 1860, with Father off ministering to the men in the army “where the fighting was,” almost four months before the American Civil War had actually started. In respect and affection for Louisa May Alcott, I have chosen to follow her chronology rather than that of strict historical accuracy.
1
Plumfield, october 1888.
Dearest Amy,
My daughter has arrived in this world, and bless the infant, she is the reddest and the squallingest baby you ever did see! We both had a hard time of her birthing, but she came through like a trump, and when they laid her upon my breast she looked up at me with her little sharp gray eyes, and nodded with a decided air, as if to say, “There now! I don’t think we’ll be doing that again, Mamma, and I for one rejoice to know it.”