via New York Times Magazine Profile
Viking will publish Gilbert’s sixth book, a novel titled “The Signature of All Things.” It is her first work of fiction in 13 years and unlike anything she has ever written. The book’s heroine is Alma Whittaker, the brilliant, restless daughter of an imperious botanical explorer. Its prose has the elegant sheen of a 19th-century epic, but its concerns — the intersection of science and faith, the feminine struggle for fulfillment, the dubious rise of the pharmaceutical industry — are essentially modern.
