If only Little Women…A Comment Challenge and giveaway

By Trix Wilkins

Been thoroughly enjoying being part of In the Bookcase’s Louisa May Alcott Reading Challenge this year – and so, in honor of the final week, I’m running a Comment Challenge to give away a copy of The Courtship of Jo March. 

[image error] Photograph by Greg Bridges 

A bit about the book

I’m one of those readers in the awkward position of being utterly in love with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women yet wishing things had worked out differently for Jo, Laurie and Beth. Whilst on holiday I started doodling, “What if Laurie had proposed like this…” and The Courtship of Jo March was born.

Here’s an excerpt from the novel, a letter from Laurie to Jo:

My dearest friend,

I could not believe my eyes upon reading your letter – how could it be possible, that I would receive such words from you! There was nothing to do but to write to you immediately, for such sentiments demand a response, and you cannot know how honored I am that you would entrust such things of your heart to me.

I wish I could be there right now, at this very instant, peering over your shoulder in the garret with a basket of apples, cheering you on, riding up and down the streets with your latest piece for publication to the world, as we once did (though perhaps, not keeping the secret as well as I did then!), and shouting, “Hail Jo March, our great and celebrated American authoress!”

For that is what you are Jo, that is who you are – you are an author. You cannot cease to write any more than you can cease to breathe. I know you. This difficult season will pass – your eyes and mind will inevitably be opened once more to the wealth of ideas all around you, as they always have been. For you see things that most do not, and you care to know of things that most do not.

On reading your letter, I couldn’t help but tell you immediately, and attempt to render to you the service you once so kindly and generously did me – Jo, keep writing stories, keep writing books. Keep learning, keep reading! For you are absolutely brilliant at it, Jo, and as of yet there is nothing I have read that compares to what you write.

My dear friend, keep writing – for I fear you will lose your heart, to lose your writing. And even if the ideas around you fall short of what you seek – even if, as you say, you have not the heart to write… perhaps it is your heart you ought to write of.

Yours sincerely,

Teddy

P.S. Please find enclosed a small gift I had the audacity to purchase for you in London. I came across this title, fresh off the press as they say, and immediately thought of you. May your adventures end, only to give way to new ones.

If you’re keen for a longer excerpt, sample chapters are available to download for free here