MY HEART IS BOUNDLESS

Edited by award-winning biographer Eve LaPlante, a companion volume to LaPlante’s groundbreaking Marmee & Louisa collecting the newly discovered private letters and diaries of Louisa May Alcott’s mother, Abigail--a radical, forward-thinking feminist whose advice and example profoundly shaped her daughter’s novels.

In this riveting compilation of Abigail May Alcott’s previously undiscovered and unexplored private writings, award-winning biographer Eve LaPlante annotates the letters, poems, and diaries of the real-life inspiration behind “Marmee” of Little Women, one of the most famous mother figures in American literature. Covering everything from writing (her own ambitions and her daughter’s) to family life to the expectations of society and her own political views, Abigail offers both charming wit and wisdom for the ages and, simultaneously, a moving, intimate portrait of a woman intellectually ahead of her time who found herself trapped in an unrewarding marriage and who transferred her power and ambition to her precocious daughters.
In surprisingly beautiful prose (a biographer once pointed out that “In some ways, Abby was a better writer than her more famous daughter”), this fantastic new collection lays bare the unparalleled love that Abigail held for her daughter, in the process reconstructing a powerful female voice that has for too long been lost to history.
Eve LaPlante is a great niece and a first cousin of Abigail and Louisa May Alcott and the author of the dual biography Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother. She is also the author of Seized, American Jezebel, and Salem Witch Judge, the winner of the 2008 Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction. She lives with her family in New England.