The Signature Of All Things

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote The Signature Of All Things. This is a long story. I listened to the audio book for over 22 hours but I loved it. The story is historical fiction and a nature story covering the 18th and 19th centuries. We start out with Henry Whitacre, a young and poor boy who's father is a gardener at Kew's Gardens on England. Henry becomes a gardener and botanist like his father. The Kew Garden manager sets a teenaged Henry overseas to collect plants in South America. Eventually Henry figures out how to treat malaria with quinine and he starts his own botanical/medical business and makes a fortune. Henry decides it is time to take a wife so he heads to Amsterdam to find one. He marries the daughter of a Danish botanist and together they set sail to Philadelphia. Henry builds a huge mansion outside of town and his wife constructs a beautiful garden. They have a daughter and name her Alma. Eventually they adopt another girl and name her Prudence. Alma becomes a skilled botanist herself. She enjoys spending time identifying plants and observing nature, and studying mosses. For her first 50 years she barely leaves her yard. After 50, after both of her parents have died, she leaves most of her fortune to her sister Alma and takes off for Tahiti where she studies plants there. After three years in Tahiti she sets sail and eventually ends up in Amsterdam. She has written a paper on her observations of mosses and has proposed a theory of why some species survive and others fail. She goes to the botanical garden of her Uncle, the younger brother of her mother. He is astonished to see her. She tells him of her life and leaves her paper for him to read. She eventually is hired on at his business and lives in his house. Her Uncle begs her to publish her paper. He thinks she is brilliant. She refuses to publish the paper because she can't understand why altruism exists. She thinks of her sister Prudence. Prudence is an abolitionist. Prudence and her family live in poor conditions, eat poor food, and dress in poor clothes because of altruism. Several years later Charles Darwin offers his theory of evolution and it is the same as Alma's. I really enjoyed reading about Henry and Alma Whitacre and their travels all over the world and the interesting people they met. Even though I listened to the story for 22 hours, I was sorry to hear it come to a close.