Summary: Elizabeth Gilbert talks about her new novel, The Signature of All Things. Spanning much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the Whittaker family, led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who eventually becomes the richest man in Philadelphia. Henry’s brilliant daughter, Alma, becomes a botanist, and as her research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a painter who draws her into the realm of the spiritual and the magical.
