It is a lovely autumn afternoon and Louisa May Alcott and her friend, Sylvia, have been invited to tea at their dear friend Dorothy's house.  Dorothy has just returned a from a yearlong honeymoon overseas, and her friends are very eager to see her.  However, young Dot doesn't show.  After waiting several hours for Dot to appear, Louisa is shocked when Dot flies into her townhouse late, disheveled, and shocked to see her company.  Knowing that Dot is not normally like this, Louisa is immediately worried and asks her friend if something is wrong.  Dot replies that she did indeed need to talk to Louisa, but could not at that very moment, and begs that they all come back for tea the following day.

The next day, the same thing happens.  Louisa and all the others show up on time, and Dot is no where to be found.  However, this time, instead of Dot flying through the door, there is someone knocking.  When Dot's husband opens the door to find a policeman standing there, he know that something has happened.  Dot has been found floating in the Boston Harbor with her little dog!  Louisa immediately thinks that something is fishy and spends the next period of her life trying to solve the mystery.  Who killed her dear friend?  And why?

This book is written with the very popular writer of THE LITTLE WOMEN, Louisa May Alcott, as the heroine.  Using this point of view, Anna Maclean did a very good job of making this tale seem true to life.  I had a very hard time determining whether this was actually a fictional novel or nonfiction.  This says a lot of Ms. Maclean's writing, that she can write a book so accurately you can imagine that a fictional story really happened.  Also because of this, the book is very deceiving.  In the front of the book, there is a comment from Louisa's great-great-nephew and there are even two letters to the reader from Louisa May Alcott.  The book is wonderful the way it is, but I would have preferred it if Ms. Maclean had written a little author's note stating that this book truly was fictional.  Many of the questions I had came back to that fact - was this real?

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good mystery.  It is very educational about the era, with facts about the Underground Railroad, other popular authors of the time, and the way life truly was in 1840's Boston.  Ms. Maclean must have done a ton of research to make this book as enjoyable as it is.  The fun isn't over, either, it seems.  At the end of LOUISA AND THE MISSING HEIRESS, there is an excerpt from the second book; and it looks like it is going to be just as wonderful as the first!