“America’s White Slaves” is an essay I contributed to a book on tolerance that will soon be published by Facing History & Ourselves. The title comes from a quote by Louisa. In 1885, when she was in her early fifties and in poor health, she learned that people were saying she had abandoned the cause of female suffrage. She wrote to Woman’s Journal, “It is impossible for me ever to ‘go back’ on woman suffrage…this most vital question of the age ... I should be a traitor to all I most love, honor, and desire to imitate if I did not covet a place among those who are giving their lives to the emancipation of the white slaves of America.”
The Christian Science Monitor will publish an essay I wrote about the Alcotts for Mother’s Day, in its Books section.
“America’s White Slaves” is an essay I contributed to a book on tolerance that will soon be published by Facing History & Ourselves. The title comes from a quote by Louisa. In 1885, when she was in her early fifties and in poor health, she learned that people were saying she had abandoned the cause of female suffrage. She wrote to Woman’s Journal, “It is impossible for me ever to ‘go back’ on woman suffrage…this most vital question of the age ... I should be a traitor to all I most love, honor, and desire to imitate if I did not covet a place among those who are giving their lives to the emancipation of the white slaves of America.”
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Marmee & Louisa is “an easy win that will flatter and inspire” your mother, Caroline Mortimer wrote this month in The Telegraph. Marmee is in good company; Mortimer’s other picks for Mother’s Day include books by Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Gaskell, and J. K. Rowling. To read the full list of “Ten perfect books to give your mother,” click on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9913197/Mothers-Day-Top-10-book-presents.html The skillful reader of the audio book of Marmee & Louisa is Karen White. Please check out her post at
http://karenwhiteaudiobooks.com/2012/11/13/marmee-louisa-by-eve-laplante/ and enjoy the audio book. The March 6 Princeton Alumni Weekly and the March/April Yankee Magazine contain nice mentions of Marmee & Louisa and My Heart Is Boundless. The PAW piece, "A Mother's Influence," by Kathryn Beaumont, ends, "During her research [for Marmee & Louisa], LaPlante found so much new material that she simultaneously was able to publish My Heart Is Boundless, a selection of Abigail's writings, which offer a unique look into the mind and world of a 19th-century American woman." Talking about Marmee & Louisa and My Heart Is Boundless today with Shelley Irwin on WGVU-FM's Morning Show in Grand Rapids, and with Paul Perrello on Metro Networks in Philadelphia. Next week I'll be on KCMN-AM's “Tron in the Morning” in Colorado Springs. What a pleasure it is to chat about these books. And what a privilege it was to write them. The Washington Independent Review has picked Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother as its book of the week. The review, by Susan Ware, general editor of American National Biography, begins, "Generations of readers have cherished gentle Marmee, the steadfast mother in Little Women who holds together her family of four girls while the father is off at war. According to Eve LaPlante, the real woman is much more interesting. Abigail May, an intellectually ambitious young woman, was thwarted by 19th-century gender expectations. Locked in a challenging marriage to a man who disdained the idea of making money, Abigail often had to fend for her family by herself. LaPlante emphasizes Abigail’s previously underappreciated role as Louisa’s muse, mentor and emotional lodestar, and reveals Abigail as an interesting character in her own right."
Bn.com has sold out of MARMEE & LOUISA, which is in its third printing! Both it and MY HEART IS BOUNDLESS were named best books of the year, the former by NPR and Salon and the latter by The Seattle Times.
In SALON last week, Maureen Corrigan, NPR's book reviewer, named her top 10 books of 2012, among them MARMEE & LOUISA! Corrigan wrote,
"What was the single most memorable character from a 2012 book? Honestly, Louisa May Alcott’s mother, Abigail, who is one of the subjects of Eve LaPlante’s dual biography called Marmee & Louisa, is someone I knew nothing about and whose activist life and tart, intelligent writing just blew me away." To read more about Corrigan's Top Ten Books in SALON: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/what_to_read_awards_maureen_corrigan/ |
AuthorEve LaPlante is the author, most recently, of the biography Marmee & Louisa and the editor of My Heart Is Boundless. Archives
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