Peopled with extraordinary characters - missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses and the quite mad - most of all it has an unforgettable heroine in Alma Whittaker, a woman of the Enlightened Age who stands defiantly on the cusp of the modern. It soars across the globe from London, to Peru, to Philadelphia, to Tahiti, to Amsterdam. The Signature of All Things is a big novel, about a big century. But what unites this couple is a shared passion for knowing - a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all of life. Alma is a clear-minded scientist Ambrose is a Utopian artist. An independent girl with a thirst for knowledge, it is not long before Alma comes into her own within the world of plants and science.As Alma's careful studies of moss take her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, the man she comes to love draws her in the opposite direction - into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma's mother, a strict woman from an esteemed Dutch family, is conversant in five living languages (and two dead ones) and her knowledge of botany is equal to any man's. Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globefrom London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond.

Her father, Henry Whittaker, is a bold and charismatic botanical explorer whose vast fortune belies his lowly beginnings as a vagrant in Kew Gardens. At the beginning of a new century, Alma Whittaker is born into a perfect Philadelphia winter.

The signature of all things characters