WHY FAMILY MATTERS (According to Bronson Alcott, his daughter – and me)

Just finished, ‘Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott & Her Father,” by John Matteson. At first I was suspicious. The book is footnoted and I suspected it of academia (oh cursed word) but it turned out to be simply scholarly, objective and a great quoter of their work by someone with a close knowledge of who they were.
Thoreau was Louisa’s teacher, Alcott’s friend and lived in their future house on Main Street in Concord. Dabbling with the Transcendentalists has been one of my life areas. Matteson’s take on Fruitlands and the struggle to understand Nature between Father & Daughter bears some resemblance to mine with my father. From start to finish ‘Eden’s Outcasts’ is as engrossing as a good novel. I couldn’t put it down.
This is a picture of my grandmother after whom I am named and her sister, Great Aunt Sarah (Niece Sarah, are you seeing your namesake?). The two old ladies who came as teenagers to the Bellingham Washington area over the mountains in a covered wagon from Kentucky, squabbling with their mother all the way. Dunlaps, they were in those days, mother’s side of the family, believers in every omen and superstition that came down the pike.
I suspect Sarah of chin hairs if not actively sitting for the original witch masks of Halloween while her sister, Roseltha Dunlap Bouck has that ‘don’t-hit-me-I’m-harmless’ smile which she always used just prior to zapping you with a zinger!
But they are family and I’ve just finished reading a compelling tract on how that works out in the long run.