Todas las cosas pueden clasificarse y etiquetarse, excepto un esp ritu aventurero. Una maravillosa novela de la autora de Come, reza, ama. 5 de enero de 1800 En los albores de un nuevo siglo, en un invierno caracter stico de Filadelfia, nace Alma Whittaker. Su padre, Henry Whittaker, es un explorador bot nico audaz y carism tico cuya vasta fortuna oculta unos or genes humildes: comenz de pilluelo en los jardines Kew de Sir Joseph Banks y de grumete a bordo del Resolution del capit n Cook. La madre de Alma, una estricta holandesa de buena familia, sabe tanto de bot nica como cualquier hombre. Ni a independiente, con una sed de conocimientos insaciable, Alma no tarda en adentrarse en el mundo de las plantas y de la ciencia. Sin embargo, a medida que el minucioso estudio de los musgos la acerca m s y m s a los misterios de la evoluci n, el hombre al que ama la arrastra en la direcci n opuesta: al mundo de lo espiritual, lo divino y lo m gico. Ella es una cient fica de mente despejada; l es un artista ut pico. Pero lo que une a esta pareja es la pasi n compartida por el saber: el desesperado deseo de comprender c mo funciona el mundo, de qu est n hechos los mecanismos de la vida. La firma de todas las cosas es una novela grandiosa que narra la historia de un siglo grandioso. Recorre todo el mundo, desde Londres hasta Per , Filadelfia, Tahit o msterdam. Habitada por personajes extraordinarios (misioneros, abolicionistas, aventureros, astr nomos, capitanes de mar, genios y locos), cuenta, por encima de todo, con una hero na inolvidable: Alma Whittaker, una mujer de la Ilustraci n que se yergue desafiante en la c spide de la era moderna. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls. In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker--a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma's research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction--into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist--but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life. Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe--from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who--born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution--bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert's wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.
