Books about Louisa May Alcott and her family

Louisa May Alcott

A Personal Biography

By Susan Cheever

(Simon & Schuster; 298 pages; $26)

Fruitlands

The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia

By Richard Francis

(Yale University Press; 321 pages; $30)

There have been many books about Louisa May Alcott and her magnum opus, "Little Women," and not a few about her father, Bronson Alcott, an important figure in his own right in the circles of 19th century New England Transcendentalism that included his friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. But there has never been a biography of Louisa May Alcott (and they inevitably all end up being about the overwhelming figure of her father as well) in which author and subject have been more personally - or powerfully - engaged than Susan Cheever's.

Cheever knows a thing or two about having a father who casts a long shadow, literarily and personally, and she does not hesitate to insert her experience as the daughter of John Cheever into this highly charged piece of writing.

And rightly so, because it not only adds a unique perspective to her work, but it also fits in with the highly personal nature of her enterprise. What strikes the reader immediately is the vital importance of Alcott and of her famous novel to Cheever, the way she has continued to engage with this book for more than half a century:

"I was twelve when my mother handed me 'Little Women,' and the book electrified me. It was as if this woman from long ago was living inside my head. Here was a story about girls doing the things I did."

And of course what makes this dynamic continuing relationship so important in a wider cultural sense is the way it has been and continues to be replicated for millions of young women.

Not many readers can equal the literary sensibility and affinity that Cheever brought to "Little Women," but what they share is the way that particular work of fiction spoke to them and to their condition in their families and in the wider world. It is not sexist - and it is not said in any way to denigrate the particular power of Alcott's novel - to realize that it has an importance for females that few, if any, males can find in it.

Yes, Alcott wrote "Little Men," but the focus of her fiction is always the female sensibility. Compare it to Charlotte Brontė's "Jane Eyre," for instance, equally a book about the heart and soul of a female figure, and the model to boot for every romance novel written since it appeared more than a century and a half ago. Yet "Jane Eyre" manages to transcend gender in its effect in a way that "Little Women" cannot. Any child unjustly punished can identify fiercely with the opening scene of "Jane Eyre," but the travails of Jo March are those of a tomboy, not a boy.

But what makes Cheever's book especially insightful is not only the way it reflects how Alcott opened up the world - and the world of fiction - for her. Her personal story, if you will. She has not only digested and assimilated Alcott's oeuvre but she has done the same for what has been written about her, and her intelligent and discriminating reaction to this vast body of work imbues her book with a truly admirable depth of understanding about the very nature of biography as well:

"Good biography scrupulously sticks to the facts. ... Yet in spite of this necessary limitation, in spite of the facts, every biography has a story imposed on the facts. ... In its own way, biography is more imaginative than the novel and more intimate than memoir. ... To me the story of Louisa May Alcott is the story of how a woman finds her place in the world. How can women choose between love and work, or should they gamble that they can have both?"

Richard Francis' "Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia" provides a decided contrast with Cheever's highly personal engagement with Louisa May Alcott. Written by an academic, it takes a measured, distanced approach to a brief period in her youth when Bronson Alcott's family bore the brunt of his putting into practice some of his more bizarre beliefs.

Cheever's book includes a characteristically pithy and revealing chapter on this episode - Fruitlands was the name of the communal settlement where 10-year-old Louisa and her family endured a few months of purgatory - but Francis devotes the same number of pages as Cheever's entire book just to this topic.

So it is not surprising that he has been able not merely to go into great and informative detail about the nature of this ill-fated experiment and its effects, but also to put it into a wider cultural context. And his sober, thoughtful, probing book also manages to provide great insight into the crucible that helped create the remarkable writer and no less remarkable woman who produced such an important piece of American fiction.

Martin Rubin is a California biographer and critic. E-mail him at books@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page FE - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle