While most readers know her only from her beloved classic and its sequels and , her journey to become one of American's best known authors was full of twists and turns. Daughter of a prominent educator, her early life was filled with encounters with such notables and Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other prominent intellectuals of the day. But her rise to literary fame marred by poverty and war, and hindered by her unconventional ideas about slavery, women's rights and politics. Author Martha Saxton shows how her transendentalist father, activist mother, and three sisters not only influenced her world view, but became the basis for stories of the March family, beloved the world over.