Finding Margaret Fuller

In 1836, when young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated “Sage of Concord,” to stay in Concord, MA, she finds her intellectual equals among his coterie of enlightened friends. She becomes a role model to young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s character of Hester Prynne and the scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he ventures into the woods of Walden Pond…and a muse to Emerson himself. But as love triangles and interpersonal drama threaten her ambitions, Margaret finds her restless soul in need of new challenges and adventure and decides she must venture into the broader world. And so she charts a singular course against a backdrop of dizzying historical drama: From Boston, where she hosts a women-only literary salon for students like Elizabeth Cady Stanton; to Harvard’s campus, where she is the first woman permitted to study within its walls; to her role as the first female foreign news correspondent, mingling with luminaries like Frederic Chopin; and to Rome where she finds a world of passion, romance, and revolution, taking a Roman count as a lover amid a revolution that would result in Italy’s unification. With a star-studded cast and epic sweep of historical events, this is a story of an inspiring trailblazer, a woman who loved big and lived even bigger—a fierce adventurer who transcended the rigid roles ascribed to women, and changed history for millions, all on her own terms.