Coming up on this Father’s Day, I found myself thinking about the relationship between fathers and daughters, and sometimes I wonder exactly what my own father has expected from me during the course of my life. Maybe it is because of those thoughts that I found myself drawn to a novel by Katharine McMahon, “The Alchemist’s Daughter,” in which the bond between a father and his daughter may be one of the most unbreakable yet heartbreaking forces in nature. Hidden away in their reclusive home of Seldon Manor, John Seldon has raised his daughter Emilie in the ways of natural philosophy and alchemy.