Eve LaPlante - Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother

V6, Unabridged, Read by Karen White
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/marmee-louisa-eve-laplante/1111364871?ean=9781451620672

Overview
“In this meticulously researched look at Louisa May Alcott and her mother, Eve LaPlante shatters myths about the supposed passive Marmee, replacing them with a portrait of a woman who fought for a woman’s right to education, professional and maternal satisfaction, and power” (People).

Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women has been a mainstay of American literature since its release nearly 150 years ago, making her one of the most successful and bestselling authors—male or female—of her day. Biographers have consistently attributed Louisa’s uncommon success to her outspoken idealist father, Bronson Alcott, assuming that he was the source of his daughter’s progressive thinking and remarkable independence.

But in this riveting dual biography, named “a top ten book of the year” by NPR and hailed as “thoroughly researched and moving” (Kirkus Reviews), award-winning biographer Eve LaPlante explodes these myths, drawing from a trove of surprising new documents to show that it was Louisa’s “Marmee,” Abigail May Alcott, who formed the intellectual and emotional center of her world. Abigail, whose difficult life both inspired and served as a warning to her devoted daughters, pushed Louisa to excel at writing and to chase her unconventional dreams in a male-dominated world.

In Marmee & Louisa, Eve LaPlante, Abigail’s great-niece and Louisa’s cousin, paints an exquisitely moving and utterly convincing portrait of a woman decades ahead of her time and her fiercely independent daughter. This “fascinating story of two visionary women” (The Boston Globe) is guaranteed to transform our view of one of America’s most beloved authors.

Editorial Reviews
From Barnes & Noble
Most devotees of Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) know that her father, A. Bronson Alcott, was a prominent Transcendentalist teacher and a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other important thinkers. Much, much less has been written about her mother, Abigail May LaPlante Alcott, who this fascinating new biography presents as a major influence on the woman who would come to write Little Women. Author Eva LaPlante (American Jezebel; Salem Witch Doctor) shows convincingly that Abigail was herself a gifted writer and reformer who was forced to subordinate her own projects to stabilize the family's shaky finances. Thus, Marmee & Louisa presents a beloved writer who was truly her mother's daughter. (P.S. LaPlante's careful research might have been partly motivated by the realization that she too is family: She is the great niece of Abigail and a first cousin of Louisa.)

Pulitzer Prize winner, bestselling author of Thomas Jefferson - Jon Meacham
“[An] involving mother-daughter portrait ... Although bitter ironies mark each woman’s story, vividly set within the social upheavals of the Civil War era, their profound love, intellect, and courage shine.”
—Booklist, starred review on Marmee & Louisa

“An important book about an important relationship. Writing engagingly and with precision, Eve LaPlante sheds new light on the Alcott story, a story that is in some ways the story of America.”

Megan Marshall
“‘Let the world know you are alive!’ Abigail Alcott counseled her daughter, who amply did, having inherited her mother’s spirit and frustrations, diaries and work ethic. Along the way Louisa May Alcott immortalized the woman in whose debt she understood herself to be and who ultimately died in her arms; Eve LaPlante beautifully resurrects her here. A most original love story, taut and tender.”
— Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author of Cleopatra: A Life

“Eve LaPlante’s Marmee & Louisa is a heartwarming and thoroughly researched story of family interdependence very much in the style of Louisa’s own unforgettable Little Women. No other biographer has examined so thoughtfully and with such compassion the mother-daughter relationship that supported both women through decades of adversity and brought a great American novel into being.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter
“‘Reason and religion are emancipating woman from that intellectual thralldom that has so long held her captive.’ That was the dearest hope of Louisa May Alcott's mother Abigail, who was a writer herself and juggled work and family in ways that will be strikingly familiar to many contemporary readers. Marmee & Louisa is the engrossing story of a vibrant, talented woman whose life and influence on her famous daughter has, until now, been erased.”