The edition is a compilation of sketches, memoirs and letters Louisa May Alcott sent home during the weeks she spent as a volunteer nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War in Georgetown. While serving as a nurse, Alcott wrote letters to her family in Concord. At the urging of others, she prepared them later for publication. The narrator of the stories was renamed Tribulation Periwinkle but the sketches are virtually authentic to Alcott's real experiences. Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was an American novelist and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist.