Young Kate
Andersen excavates the lives of Katharine Houghton Hepburn's grandparents (the Houghtons) and parents and Kate's early years up to graduation from Bryn Mawr, with the family always in foreground. This is a book that will win many hearts as it lays bare the divine chemistry of the Hepburn family that coalesced in Kate herself. On the maternal, Houghton side, Kate's great-grandfather and grandfather were businessmen-inventors--founders of the world-famed Coming Glass Works. Her fiery, fierce father became a pioneer urologist and led a vastly unpopular campaign against venereal disease (in a day when a lady's ankle was never seen and no one had genitals). Her mother was an active suffragette and towering warrior for women's fights in every field, not just for the vote, and the Hepburn house often sported the likes of Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, and Sinclair Lewis. Inspires readers with a sense of what--amid every earthquake humanity is heir to--a great family can be.