Alice I Have Been

Description

Alice I Have Been, the girl who inspired a classic, at last tells her own extraordinary tale of life beyond the looking glass. As bold and imaginative as her storybook character, Alice shares the secrets of a blessed childhood in Oxford, where as the precocious daughter of the dean, she is pampered by everyone, including shy, stuttering academic, Charles Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll. But in one fateful moment, when she begs her grown-up friend to write down one of his wild and fanciful stories of talking rabbits, mad hatters and a fearless little girl, her life is changed forever. From the unconventional young woman who catches the eyes of a prince, wife and mother of three soldiers to grieving widow, she is, ever and always, thought of as that Alice. Looking back at the childhood mystery that took a lifetime to solve and her tumultuous love life, Alice at last discovers - and embraces - the woman she became when she outgrew Wonderland.

Melanie Benjamin lives in Illinois, where she is working on her next novel

"This is magic!" --Diana Gabaldon "Excellent . . . a finely wrought portrait of Alice that seamlessly blends fact with fiction. This is book club gold."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A seamless tale of love, loss, and myth . . . storytelling at its finest."--Sarah Addison Allen, author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon "A smashing tale--mostly true--of the overlap of childhood and womanhood, a compelling mystery, an expose of Victorian mores, an exploration of love that came too soon and too late, an explosive trail of emotions and human foibles, a heartbreak--written with compassion and grace: I loved it!" --Susan Vreeland, author of Clara and Mr. Tiffany "The novel doesn't just fill in the blanks of a literary life, but tells the story of someone who was more than a muse; Alice may have been immortalized as a girl but, as Benjamin imagines, she grew up to be a great woman."--New York Post