Louisa raised May’s daughter, who the family called Lulu, until Louisa died in 1888. At the request of the Nieriker family, Anna Alcott Pratt then brought ten-year-old Lulu to Zurich to live with them. Lulu spent most of the rest of her life in Switzerland, where she married, raised one daughter, and died in 1975.
Some of May’s paintings remain in Europe with the Nieriker family. Others are displayed in historic houses in Concord, most importantly in Orchard House, where the gods and goddesses May drew on her bedroom walls and the flowers and owl in Louisa’s bedroom have been preserved. Some art works have likely been destroyed, lost, relegated to attics, or hung on walls where they’re seldom looked at. But there will always be people who pause to consider paintings May left behind and wonder about the woman who held the brush.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So many librarians deserve parades every day, but here I’ll just thank those at the Houghton Library at Harvard College, the Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library, and the good people at Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts and Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts: You have helped make research a delight. I’m grateful to everyone who works to make history accessible, particularly those at Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, overseen with such skill and devotion by Jan Turnquist.
My writing group makes my work possible. For twenty-five years, Bruce Carson, Dina Friedman, and Lisa Kleinholz have raised bars, asked the right questions, and cheered at all the right times. I’ve also been lucky to have wonderful writing teachers and students. There are too many to name, like my good friends, though I’ll single out Karen Lederer, who’s kept a folder of stories with my name on it since we were students at UMass-Amherst, and Amy Greenfield, for a conversation by the Concord River that led me to take out the manuscript that had long gripped me one more time. Always, I thank my husband Peter Laird, and our daughter, Emily, who make life so very sweet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEANNINE ATKINS is the author of books for young readers featuring women in history, including Borrowed Names: Poems about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C. J. Walker, Marie Curie and their Daughters. She is an adjunct professor at Simmons College and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She welcomes readers to visit her online at:
www.jeannineatkins.com.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere.
Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story by Rebecca Coffey. $18.95, 978-1-938314-42-1. An irreverent, fictionalized exploration of the seemingly contradictory life of Anna Freud—told from her point of view.
The Rooms Are Filled by Jessica Null Vealitzek. $16.95, 978-1-938314-58-2. The coming-of-age story of two outcasts—a nine-year-old boy who just lost his father, and a closeted young woman—brought together by circumstance.
Bittersweet Manor by Tory McCagg. $16.95, 978-1-938314-56-8. A chronicle of three generations of love, manipulation, entitlement, and disappointed expectations in an upper-middle class New England family.
A Cup of Redemption by Carole Bumpus. $16.95, 978-1-938314-90-2. Three women, each with their own secrets and shames, seek to make peace with their pasts and carve out new identities for themselves.
The Sweetness by Sande Boritz Berger. $16.95, 978-1-63152-907-8. A compelling and powerful story of two girls—cousins living on separate continents—whose strikingly different lives are forever changed when the Nazis invade Vilna, Lithuania.
What is Found, What is Lost by Anne Leigh Parrish. $16.95, 978-1-938314-95-7. After her husband passes away, a series of family crises forces Freddie, a woman raised on religion, to confront long-held questions about her faith.
Little Woman in Blue Page 27