Finding Margaret Fuller

September 1, 2023

In Finding Margaret Fuller, the New York Times best-selling Pataki follows the fiery Fuller from her association with the Transcendentalists to her Boston salon for women, her work as the first female foreign news correspondent, and her dangerous liaison with a Roman count. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 8, 2024
Pataki (The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post) takes readers on a trans-Atlantic journey in this winning fictional biography of Transcendentalist writer Margaret Fuller (1810–1850). In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson offers the 26-year-old scholar a job as editor of his magazine the Dial in Concord, Mass. She accepts, but strikes out on her own several months later because the magazine is unable to earn enough money to cover her salary. After publishing two successful books, including one focused on inequities faced by women, she travels to Rome in 1847 as a foreign news correspondent to witness what she and her boss, Horace Greeley, hope will be the birth of the nation of Italy. In Rome, the perpetually lonely Margaret at last meets and marries a man who appreciates her active mind. In 1848, Italy joins the wave of nationalist democratic revolutions against monarchies across Europe, and Margaret hides in the countryside to give birth to her son. On the way back to Rome to be with her husband, a member of the nationalistic Civil Guard, she is nearly killed in an attack, and she and her family depart for America. Pataki’s star-studded and gripping account is full of lush details about the life of an overlooked contributor to Transcendentalism and women’s rights. This is one to savor. Agent: Lacy Lynch, Dupree Miller & Assoc.

February 15, 2024
A fictionalized take on the trailblazing life of 19th-century feminist Margaret Fuller. Much has been written about Fuller, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography published in 2014. But Pataki believes Fuller still hasn't gotten her due--especially in comparison to her male contemporaries. Hence this novel, which begins in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1836, when the 26-year-old Margaret--home-schooled by her father and highly educated for a woman of her time--first visits Ralph Waldo Emerson. Waldo, as he was known, becomes her great mentor and friend, and soon Margaret is keeping company with the likes of Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this telling, Emerson and Hawthorne are wildly attracted to her--Hester Prynne in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is thought to have been inspired by Fuller--but remain tied to their traditional wives. Though not exactly lonely, Margaret, who narrates her story, is portrayed as a woman alone, struggling with financial woes. Yet soon enough she is making a name for herself, leading groundbreaking conversation groups for women; editing The Dial, journal of the Transcendentalists; writing books; and working for social reform. After she signs on as a journalist for the New-York Tribune, editor Horace Greeley sends her to report from Europe as the first female foreign correspondent. Margaret eventually arrives in Italy to cover the country's fight for independence and begins an affair with a Roman soldier, Giovanni Ossoli, with whom she has a baby. Despite these dramatic events, much of the novel is earnest and tame, the opposite of a page-turner. There's a lot of clumsy exposition and literary name-dropping, with dialogue nowhere near as lively as the characters speaking it. The author never finds her subject in this mostly lackluster account of a memorable literary figure.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 15, 2024
Historical fiction can restore neglected figures to their rightful place in the public consciousness, and Pataki's (The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post, 2022) sweepingly urgent, inspiring novel about the astonishing life of Margaret Fuller aims to do just that. American feminist writer, Transcendentalist thinker, journal editor, foreign correspondent--Fuller was all of these and more, blasting through gender-based barriers insufficient to deter a woman of her intelligence and ambition. The prologue dramatizes her friends' reaction to her tragic early death in a shipwreck in 1850, but while a sense of what might have been permeates the story, readers will emerge with even greater amazement about her accomplishments. In this first-person narrative, Margaret explores her relationships with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his circle in Concord, Massachusetts, enticingly described as a pastoral New England paradise blossoming with creative thought. Her itinerant quest for belonging is driven partly by financial insecurity. From Nathaniel Hawthorne to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a vibrant cast of mid-nineteenth-century luminaries comes alive alongside Margaret, who follows her desire to create original works and take action. Her salon-style "Conversations" in Boston galvanize the female participants, and in faraway Italy, Margaret finds love, political purpose, and a spiritual home. An invigorating fictional portrait of a brilliant woman always striving to achieve her potential.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.