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Kelly O’Connor McNees | Exploring THE LOST SUMMER OF LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Author Guest / June 15, 2011

Like many readers, I have always loved LITTLE WOMEN and read it many times. But I didn’t know very much about Louisa May Alcott until I picked up a biography of her at the library. What I learned was surprising and intriguing. Louisa wrote many more novels and stories than just LITTLE WOMEN and its sequels. Some of what she wrote was considered so sensational, it was published under a pseudonym or not published at all and later found among her papers. Speaking of her papers, she burned a lot of them, journals and letters, before she died. That piece of information, along with questions that had lingered for me about why Louisa wrote LITTLE WOMEN the way she did, prompted me to consider writing a novel about the young author. That was when the real research began. I read every biography of her and her family that I could find. Interestingly, they varied in tone and slant, which is how I learned the truth about biographies: They say more about the biographer than the subject of the book. From there, I went on to read the journals and letters that remain, collected by a family friend after Louisa’s death….

Fresh Pick | THE LOST SUMMER OF LOUISA MAY ALCOTT by Kelly O’Connor McNees
Fresh Pick / June 15, 2011

May 2011 On Sale: May 3, 2011 Featuring: Louisa May Alcott; Joseph Singer 368 pages ISBN: 0425240835 EAN: 9780425240830 Paperback $15.00  Add to Wish List Historical Buy at Amazon.com Twisted classic in form of “what if?” The Lost Summer Of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees In the bestselling tradition of Loving Frank and March comes a novel for anyone who loves Little Women. Millions of readers have fallen in love with Little Women. But how could Louisa May Alcott-who never had a romance-write so convincingly of love and heart-break without experiencing it herself? In her debut novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, Kelly O’Connor McNees deftly mixes fact and fiction as she imagines a summer lost to history, carefully purged from Louisa’s letters and journals, a summer that would change the course of Louisa’s writing career—and inspire the story of love and heartbreak between Jo and Teddy “Laurie” Laurence, Jo’s devoted neighbor and kindred spirit. In the summer of 1855, Walt Whitman’s controversial Leaves of Grass has just been released, and the notion of making a living as a writer is still a far-off dream for Louisa. She is twenty-two years old, vivacious, and bursting with…

Anna Maclean | Reconnecting with Louisa May Alcott
Author Guest / June 15, 2011

Reunions are tricky and usually I avoid them. But when I had the chance to reconnect with a childhood girlfriend, I jumped at it. I’m speaking of course about the sleuth of my mystery series, Louisa May Alcott. I read LITTLE WOMEN several times in my early years; Jo was a model for me, a girl of strength and strong opinions, independent, temperamental, yet also solid, steady, gentle. Later I realized that Jo was Louisa’s alter ego: both of them were writers, both chose independence and work over being a wife and mother, both worked hard to keep the wolf from the door and their family intact. Working with Louisa as a character in my novel, LOUISA AND THE MISSING HEIRESS, required getting to know her very well. I read her works, this time delving particularly into some she published under a pseudonym, the somewhat lurid tales she called her ‘blood and thunder’ stories. Because Louisa was a lady from a good family, when she wrote fiction of what some might deem a questionable nature, she did not use her family name. But the reasons for sometimes publishing under a pen name are deeper than that: Louisa and her family…