Plot Changes November 14, 2011

What would you change about a classic novel? Would you save Anna Karenina from suicide? Bring Rhett back to Scarlett? Or would you have Santiago return to port with his prize marlin fully intact? This week in #litchat we’re discussing what you would change in the plots of classic novels.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted returns to #litchat on Friday to discuss her latest novel, Little Women and Me. In this imaginative and witty YA novel, Logsted ventures into the world of Little Women. When Emily, sick and tired of being a middle sister, gets an assignment to describe what she’d change about a classic novel, Emily pounces on Little Women. After all, if she can’t change things in her own family, maybe she can bring a little justice to the March sisters. (Kill off Beth? Have cute Laurie wind up with Amy instead of Jo? What was Louisa May Alcott thinking?!) But when Emily gets mysteriously transported into the world of the book, she discovers that righting fictional wrongs won’t be easy. And after being immersed in a time and place so different from her own, it may be Emily-not the four March sisters-who undergoes the most surprising change of all. Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s winning confection will appeal to fans of Little Women as well as anyone who enjoys a modern twist on an old favorite.

Between 1994 and May 2002—when Red Dress Ink called with an offer to buy her first novel, The Thin Pink Line—Baratz-Logsted worked as a book reviewer, a freelance editor and writer, and a window washer, making her arguably the only woman in the world who has ever both hosted a book signing party and washed the windows of the late best-selling novelist Robert Ludlum.

Since Red Dress Ink’s call in 2002, Baratz-Logsted has kept very busy with writing more novels and checking her Amazon ranking on a daily basis. She has authored novels for adult readers, young adult novels and The Sister’s Eight middle grade series. She still lives in Danbury, with her husband and daughter, where she has lived since 1991.

Follow Lauren Baratz-Logsted on Twitter: @LaurenBaratzL.