Eve LaPlante Wins Kudos for Book on the Alcotts

 Eve LaPlante's recent book, Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother, was mentioned on several lists of the best books of the year, including those from National Public Radio and the Seattle Times. LaPlante's website describes the book thusly:

In this groundbreaking work, LaPlante paints an exquisitely moving, utterly convincing portrait of a woman decades ahead of her time, and the fiercely independent daughter whose life was deeply entwined with her mother’s dreams of freedom. Based on newly uncovered papers, this moving portrait of Louisa May Alcott’s relationship with her mother will transform our view of one of America’s most beloved authors.

 LaPlante, coincidentally, is a cousin of Louisa May Alcott and a great-niece of Abigail May Alcott.

She has published articles, essays, and five nonfiction books. Seized is a narrative portrait of a common brain disorder that can alter personality, illuminating the mind-body problem and the limits of free will. American Jezebel tells the true story of LaPlante’s ancestor the colonial heretic and founding mother Anne Hutchinson. LaPlante’s second ancestor biography, Salem Witch Judge, about the 1692 judge who became an abolitionist and feminist, won the 2008 Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction. LaPlante’s new books — Marmee & Louisa, a groundbreaking dual biography of Louisa May Alcott and her mother, and My Heart Is Boundless, the first compilation of the personal writings of Abigail May Alcott — were published by Free Press in November 2012. 

LaPlante is making appearances throughout the winter and spring to promote the book in New England, with a complete schedule here.