The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton,: Or, a Memoir of Startling and Amusing Episodes from Itinerant Lifea Novel

Scholarly research and an imaginative plot are the linchpins of Begiebing's beguiling second novel (after The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin). A historian taking inventory of a Massachusetts archive stumbles across a kunstlerroman (artist novel) written by feisty Allegra Fullerton, who details her adventures as a traveling portrait painter in 19th-century New England. Begiebing presents Allegra's memoirs in formal, lustrous period language, and his meticulously evoked settings, dialogue and characters provide a seamlessly authentic entry into the era. Widowed in 1836 at the age of 20, Allegra returns to the New Hampshire farm where she was raised, but rather than endure the drudgeries of farm life, she decides to use her gift for creating ""true likenesses."" Accompanied by her brother Tom, who serves as her ""assistant-promoter-protector,"" Allegra takes to the road to earn their livelihoods by ""limning"" the features of both the living and the dead (through then-fashionable memorial portraits). Though clients are initially skeptical of the idea of a woman painter, Allegra's work speaks for itself, and soon they are flush from her commissions. A wealthy textiles manufacturer in Worcester, Mass., provides a lucrative assignment for Allegra, but his degenerate son drugs, abducts and holds her hostage, expecting an ""intimate friendship"" with his prisoner. Escaping after months of captivity, Allegra is taken to a home for fallen women, where she is befriended by early feminist Margaret Fuller, who arranges for her stay at a utopian commune. Reunion with a joyful Tom leads to tragedy, and Tom goes abroad while Allegra returns to Boston, but her world expands as she learns the principles of transcendentalism. Her studies with master painter George Spooner lead to a trip to Italy, where she meets art critic John Ruskin. She becomes a celebrated artist, blossoming amid the political upheavals in a rapidly changing society. Saturated with vivid period detail, sprinkled with rousing feminist sentiments, if occasionally slowed by didactic discourse on the meaning of art, the novel will keep readers engrossed in its intelligent heroine's adventures. Reproductions of 19th-century portraits provide a visual supplement to this first-rate tale. (Nov.)