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.
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