Best known for her novels Little Women and Little Men, Louisa May Alcott continued the story of her feisty protagonist Jo in this final novel chronicling the adventures and misadventures of the March family. Entertaining, surprising, and overall a joy to read, Jo’s Boys is nevertheless shaded by a bittersweet tone, for with it Alcott brought her wonderful series to an end.

Beginning ten years after Little Men, Jo’s Boys revisits Plumfield, the New England school still presided over by Jo and her husband, Professor Bhaer. Jo’s boys--including rebellious Dan, sailor Emil, and promising musician Nat--are grown; Jo herself remains at the center of this tale, holding her boys fast through shipwreck and storm, disappointment...and even murder.

Louisa May Alcott Born in 1832, Louisa May Alcott was the second child of Bronson Alcott of Concord, Massachusetts, a selftaught philosopher, school reformer, and utopian who was much too immersed in the world of ideas to ever succeed in supporting his family. Although Louisa hired herself out as a domestic servant at age nineteen,it was through her writing that she finally brought them financial independence.

Her brief service as a Civil War nurse resulted in Hospital Sketches (1863), but she earned more from the lurid thrillers she began writing in 1861 under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. These tales, with titles like "Pauline’s Passion and Punishment," featured strongwilled and flamboyant heroines but were not identified as Alcott’s work until the 1940s.

Fame and success came unexpectedly in 1868.When a publisher suggested she write a "girl’s book,"she drew on memories of her own childhood and wrote Little Women, depicting herself as Jo March,while her sisters Anna, Abby May, and Elizabeth became Meg, Amy, and Beth. Little Women, to its author’s surprise, struck a chord in America’s largely female reading public and became a huge success.Louisa was prevailed upon to continue the story,which she did in Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886). In 1873 she published Work: A Story of Experience, an autobiography in fictional disguise with an all too appropriate title.

As a famous writer, she continued to turn out novels and stories and to work for the women’s suffrage and temperance movements. She died in Boston in March of 1888.

1 Ten Years Later

2 Parnassus

3 Jo’s Last Scrape

4 Dan

5 Vacation

6 Last Words

7 The Lion and the Lamb

8 Josie Plays Mermaid

9 The Worm Turns

10 Demi Settles

11 Emil’s Thanksgiving

12 Dan’s Christmas

13 Nat’s New Year

14 Hays at Plumfield

15 Waiting

16 In the Tennis-court

17 Among the Maids

18 Class Day

19 White Roses

20 Life for Life

21 Aslauga’s Knight

22 Positively Last Appearance