"Louisa May Alcott" portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own right as her legendary character Jo March, and addresses all aspects of Alcott's life: the effect of her father's self-indulgent utopian schemes, her family's chronic economic difficulties and frequent uprootings, her experience as a nurse in the Civil War, the loss of her health and, sadly, her reliance on opiates in middle age. Stories and details culled from Alcott's journals,...