An enjoyable biography of a fascinating woman. Mary Seacole, Jamaican "doctress" and entrepreneur, did things that simply weren't done in the Victorian age—at least not by anyone else. Robinson fills in many of the gaps left by Seacole's breezy autobiography, and she does a great job of providing the historical context for this one of a kind woman.

There's a surprisingly wide assortment of history packed into this 200-page book—Jamaica; New Granada (Panama) during the Gold Rush; the Crimean War. I'd never heard of Seacole's friend Alexis Soyer, French chef and inventor of the soup kitchen, and I learned some things about her not so friendly counterpart, Florence Nightingale. Robinson points out that Nightingale, 34 at the time, needed her parents' permission to accept the British government's commission to establish a corps of nurses during the Crimean War, a detail that contrasts deliciously with the lifelong self-direction of Seacole.

The biographer is a bit too eager to bring up completely unrelated matters that allow her to footnote her own other works ("A certain Lady Hodgson, involved in an African uprising some fifty years after this Crimean experience of Mary's…"), and I quibble with a few of her interpretations, but I appreciate the way Robinson celebrates Seacole's unique experiences and achievements without seeking to turn her into a paragon. Seacole comes alive as an individual here: intrepid, entertaining, imperfect. ( )