If this sounds like a mashup of “Gone With the Wind,’’ Henry James, and “Downton Abbey,’’ just wait, there’s more. At the age of 51, the widowed Low founded the Girl Scouts. Though no supermarket-stalking, Thin Mint-hawking, green-and-sash-clad moppets appear in this book, there are homemade cookies, baked and sold by industrious World War I-era Girl Scouts to support their troops. Unfortunately, the cookies don’t appear until page 282. The American Girl Scouts don’t get their start until about page 200, two thirds of the way into a biography that fully captures its dynamic subject and her greatest accomplishment, but occasionally lags in the telling.
Low was no traditional heroine. Known to family and friends as “Crazy Daisy,’’ she was delightfully fun-loving and irritatingly erratic. She loved theater and art, could stand on her head - at least she does twice in these pages - and was an avid sportswoman, though, to her disappointment, her husband would not let her ride to the hunt. She traveled to India and Egypt and, once airplanes were invented, loved to fly. Despite a complex relationship with her critical mother, she was devoted to family and friends, and she internalized her family’s creed of duty, honor, and service. She was also, for much of her life, nearly deaf, which made her accomplishments even more striking, while driving those around her even more crazy.
The first half century of Low’s life affords glimpses of her future calling. “She idealized ‘Indian culture,’ ’’ loved uniforms, and joined a boarding-school secret society that awarded badges. But for the most part, she lived her life, and the story often drags. As the book trudges through the years between her husband’s death and the birth of the Girl Scouts, we are reminded repeatedly that she ultimately disdained social life and desperately sought a purpose.
