Elizabeth Gilbert may be best known for her searching memoirs, but her curiosity extends, in this enthralling historical novel, to the world of plants. The story follows Alma Whittaker, a brilliant and observant woman born into a botanical family in Philadelphia, who dedicates herself to the study of mosses. Through years of meticulous observation, she begins to notice patterns in how the plant spreads, competes, and adapts to its environment, and leads her to ideas resembling evolution and natural selection – years before Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Through one woman’s devotion to biological science, Gilbert shows how even the smallest forms of life can expose deep truths about survival, time, and the complexity of existence.