Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women has been something of a rite of passage between mothers and daughters for generations.

Mothers present their little girls with their very own copy of the book. And eventually, some lazy vacation day or rainy weekend is given over to a viewing of one the film versions of Alcott's book, whether it's the 1933 Katherine Hepburn version, the 1949 June Allyson vehicle, or the modern 1994 Winona Ryder interpretation.

But while Little Women was, in part, autobiographical, the full story of the life and times of Louisa May Alcott is not so well known.

Author and screenwriter Harriet Reisen has taken on that challenge, and the result is her comprehensive and eminently readable work Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. Reisen appears at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord next Thursday to read from and discuss her book, which reached No. 7 this week on The Boston Globe's hardcover nonfiction best seller list. Reisen is also the writer of the upcoming PBS program American Masters: Louisa May Alcott, which will air in December.

Her book is at once sweeping and personal. Publisher's Weekly said that Reisen's "rich empathy for Alcott never falters," and Reisen's devotion both to scholarship and Alcott herself makes the book truly an interesting and engaging read.

You are an experienced screenwriter and this project started for you as an idea for a script. How did that scriptwriting background inform your research and writing?

From doing screenplays you learn to build up the dramatic stretches, the climaxes, the anti-climax. In a movie it's especially important to set up what's going to happen later, for the story to feel alive.

My mom gave me my copy of Little Women when I was about 8, and I can remember watching the Hepburn movie with her. She told me that when she was a little girl she wanted to be Jo, the

tomboy, the writer, the kind of frustrated feminist of the March brood. Did you want to be Jo? Have you met women who didn't want to be Jo?

There are people who want to be Amy - they like her for her beauty, her elegance. I wanted to be Jo for sure. It seems like many people who are artistically inclined or who want to write wanted to be Jo. Many writers have said that they were first inspired by Jo. I had a friend once who wanted to be Meg. I never got that, really.

This is not just the story of Louisa May Alcott but the story of her father, Bronson, the ahead-of-his-time educator and thinker, and mother Abigail, a challenging and sometimes troubled character. Did you discover things about Alcott's parents that surprised you?

There were things about all of them that surprised me! Louisa's parents continually surprised me, and Louisa herself: She believed in reincarnation. Her father flirted with Buddhism for a time. And Louisa's mother: She was fiercely devoted to her child. But she also expected that her children would take on the duty of taking care of her, and she didn't encourage independence in Louisa, perhaps to ensure that she would be there for her.

You first read Little Woman over a rainy weekend in your youth, and then you went on to read the rest of Alcott's works. Do you recall what so engaged and enthralled you?

Once I started with Little Women I went on to devour the rest of Louisa's work. I think for me, I found in her work the confidence that I could be a writer. Even as a flawed person, even as a person with weaknesses, even as a moody person, I could follow my dream. Louisa has given that message to a lot of people.

As you work on such an intense project you must come to identify with, and feel a great affection for your subject. Were there times were you were personally distressed when you discovered certain facts, or flaws about Louisa? Were you pained to include some of those flaws?

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