The signature of all things : [a novel]
(Book)

Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this sweeping novel follows the fortunes of the Whittakers -- a family of botanical explorers, led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker, a poor-born Englishman who makes his fortune in the South American quinine trade and swiftly becomes the richest man in the New World. His daughter, Alma, born into great luxury in 1800, ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. She is brilliant and insatiable, driven by an unquenchable sense of wonder, and also by a desperate need to understand the hidden mechanism behind all life.