Seattle author Elise Hooper (“The Other Alcott”) will visit Eagle Harbor Book Company to discuss her new historical novel — “Learning to See: A Novel of Dorothea Lange, the Woman who Revealed the Real America”— at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24.

The book is the fictionalized account of famed photographer Dorothea Lange, the woman behind the camera who risked everything for art, activism, and love — and created some of the most iconic images of the 20th century.

In 1918, a fearless 22-year-old arrived in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange, she was soon the celebrated owner of the city’s most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter Maynard Dixon.

By the early 1930s, as America’s economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young sons single-handedly.

Determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation’s poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform and define the era. And when the United States enters World War II, she chose to confront another injustice: the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans.

At a time when women were supposed to keep the home fires burning, Dorothea Lange dared to be different — but her choices came at a steep price.