Giveaway: The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

In honor of its paperback publication we have a giveaway for The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. There is one copy available for a US winner.

Since the book has a theme that is related to botany, Penguin is having another contest associated with the book’s release that many of you may be interested in - “Enter for a chance to win a beautiful plant every month for a year!—delivered to your home direct from White Flower Farm.” Link on the previous text to see more information and enter.

You also may want to take a look at this fun THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS reading guide, which, among other things, includes reading group discussion questions and a Q&A with the author.

Now for the publisher’s blurb for the book:

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A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed

In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry’s brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father’s money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma’s research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction—into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist—but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life.

Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe—from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who—born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution—bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert’s wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.

Paperback | 512  Pages | 24 Jun 2014 | Penguin Books | Adult

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ELIZABETH GILBERT is the acclaimed author of five books of fiction and nonfiction. Her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, was a #1 New York Times bestseller; it has been published in more than thirty languages and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, and in 2010 was made into a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts. Gilbert’s debut novel Stern Men was a New York Times Notable Book; her short story collection, Pilgrims, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and her most recent work, Committed—a memoir of marriage—was a # 1 New York Times bestseller. In 2008, Time magazine named Gilbert one of the most influential people in the world. http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/