Alma Whittaker is the friend I needed during a cold winter of grief. The secret life of mosses revealed truths for her that science had not yet seen in her time. She loved reading and her mother taught her to read, write and speak several languages before her premature death of cancer in Alma's adolescence. Her adopted, beautiful, sister Prudence is in many things her opposite but also her most faithful friend. Prudence does not put much effort into science. In stead she dedicates her whole life to fight slavery and rescue former slaves to freedom.
This novel that literally offers the reader a trip around the world of science and the search for the answer to the question which Darwin never could understand: why we do good to each other. Why are there so many Dorothea Brookes and Prudences in this world of survival of the fittest?
Sometimes we cannot get answers to the questions we have but it is a great comfort that we have that question, still unanswered, for without that phenomenon, who would survive at all? What would become of us all?
