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.
