Eve LaPlante

SALEM WITCH JUDGE: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall
(HarperOne, 2007)

Featured on NPR's "Here and Now", in The Boston Globe (an October 2007 profile by David Mehegan), and on Comcast CN8's "Your Morning."

Winner of the 2008 Winslow House Book Award "for the best book published in 2007 concerning the interaction of early New England (1620-1852) with the wider Atlantic world."

"Salem Witch Judge upends popular stereotypes about Puritans.... LaPlante's touching biography of Samuel Sewall... seems hauntingly familiar. Beneath the sensational title is a figure more familiar than we realize."


"Compelling... fascinating... Salem Witch Judge offers an intriguing journey into a world as far away as colonial America – and yet at the same time as close as the human heart."


"LaPlante's splendid biography brings a personal touch to Sewall's story..."


"A Highly Recommended Book of 2008"


"Affectionate and affecting... LaPlante's portrait of a man whose second act became one of atonement as well as contrition is finely drawn..."


"The toughest thing in politics is to admit you were wrong and to do something about it. That, remarkably, is what Samuel Sewall did, and in so doing, he fundamentally changed the debate over witchcraft forever. At a time when at least some Americans are arguing that we have to cut back on our civil liberties in the interest of national security, LaPlante’s biography of Sewall profiles an early American politician whose example stands out for its courage and its wisdom."


"Well researched, readable, and engaging.... fascinating.... Recommended."


"Insightful... vivid... A reformative, assenting spin on Salem's hellfire and brimstone history."


"Sympathetic and richly detailed..."


"Eve LaPlante recounts the life of her ancestor lovingly, but meticulously. In the process, she expertly guides us through the religious life of colonial New England, from well before the 1692 Salem witchcraft episode to long after Samuel Sewall's somber reflections on - and his apology for - his role in that hysteria. LaPlante also reveals the ever enlarging magnanimity of Sewall's spirit, specifically with respect to slaves, Native Americans, and women. His life - and her book - deserve our total and grateful attention."


"An incredible look at a man who was a pioneer in the forming of the American consciousness. Eve's view of Samuel's morality is a reminder to modern day America of how this great nation was formed."


"Judge Sewall is one of the great public figures of pre-revolutionary America, and his 'confession' for his part in the Salem witch trials remains a high and all-too-rare example of public contrition. His example is pertinent to our times."



In 1692 Samuel Sewall, a forty-year-old father of five, sat on the colonial court that tried hundreds of people accused of witchcraft. Believing the girls who claimed their neighbors bewitched them, Sewall convicted and condemned to death more than thirty women and men, including two of his friends. He and the court executed twenty people before public opinion turned and the governor halted the proceedings. Sewall struggled internally for years before publicly assuming "the blame and shame" for the wrongful convictions and deaths. He went on to compose America’s first antislavery tract and a revolutionary essay portraying Native Americans as virtuous inheritors of God’s grace. In a period when women were considered inferior to men, Sewall publicly affirmed the fundamental equality of the sexes. Through his long repentance Sewall became America’s most surprising moral hero.

AMERICAN JEZEBEL: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans (HarperOne, 2004, 2005)
Featured on NPR's "The Connection," Comcast's "Nitebeat," and WCVB-TV's "Chronicle."


"A BEST NONFICTION BOOK of 2004."


"Fast-paced and elegant... A first-rate biography..."


"To all those teachers around the country who ask me: What true heroes can I tell my students about? I would reply: Tell them about Anne Hutchinson. And read Eve LaPlante's biography of her to make her and her courage come alive."


"A stunning book, exquisitely written, that fills in a crucial piece of American history. Founding mother Anne Hutchinson is a woman everyone will want to -- and should -- know about."


"LaPlante, the master of biography as thriller, tells a familiar story with a novelist’s panache... An enthralling narrative."


"Valiant and remarkably successful... LaPlante is particularly good on the sexual mores of the Puritans."


"Fascinating... electric... A rare and charming glimpse into the pleasures of a historian's detective work."


"What makes American Jezebel so extraordinary is how LaPlante enables Hutchinson to come alive through her own words... LaPlante's vivid account... renders her subject not as simple saint or sinner, but as a textured human being."



"Well worth reading... Anne Hutchinson is among the most-neglected, most important figures in United States history."


"Drawing on a staggering amount of historical detail, 12th-generation descendant Eve LaPlante plots her forebear’s downfall with the vivid immediacy of a novel."


"LaPlante paints a fascinating portrait of this complex mother of 15 and... deftly depicts the gritty world of colonial New England."


"A powerful biography of a woman who refused to still her voice."


"I feel even better about having pardoned Anne Hutchinson! This terrific book also carried with it a message for today. America faces the same question the Bay Colony faced: liberty versus security. Let's hope the lessons of Hutchinson's banishment are not lost on those entrusted with ensuring we are both strong and free."


"New England's foremother and Harvard's midwife is here rescued from Puritan obscurity and reintroduced to 21st-century America. Anne Hutchinson's passionate, nonconformist intelligence makes her the most significant woman in pre-Revolutionary America."


"American Jezebel offers a spirited biography of a stirring figure who pushed the limits of Puritan dissent and paid heavily for it. Hutchinson's story has often served as an emblem by which to measure the public voices of women in America, and LaPlante's rendering shows how deeply resonant that history remains."


"This vivid and richly documented book tells the nearly incredible story of a woman who managed, in a male-dominated, religion-obsessed world, to shape the future of New England and New York."


"Dazzling... Splendid..."


"Powerful characters, a compelling tale, and a strong narrative writer in LaPlante... [This] fascinating book deserves wide reading. It shows religious zealotry in an American context,... from the inside out."


"As a genealogist I can find and record the dry facts, but it can be difficult to add flesh to those dried bones and make your ancestors come to life. American Jezebel makes Anne Hutchinson more than just facts and dates; she became a living, breathing person."


"Eve LaPlante throws us into the action and weaves us carefully into Hutchinson's world in England, Boston, Rhode Island, and New York... Finally, an author has given us a meticulously-researched guided tour with maps... In this book the early 1600s come alive... the living habits and the obsession with religion. Thank you, LaPlante, for clarifying the long civic and church trials of Anne Hutchinson, making them lively and readable..."


Synopsis: In November 1637, Anne Hutchinson stood before forty male judges of the Massachusetts General Court. The 46-year-old midwife and Puritan leader, pregnant with her sixteenth child, parried their every charge of heresy and sedition. In a period when a woman could not vote, hold public office, or teach outside the home, Hutchinson showed remarkable political power, prompting Governor John Winthrop to deride her as "this American Jezebel." LaPlante’s definitive biography captures Hutchinson’s life in all its complexity, presenting a riveting portrait of early America. Moving from Hutchinson’s dramatic courtroom battles to her banishment in Rhode Island, where she became the only woman ever to found an American colony, American Jezebel sheds light on the origins of our modern concepts of religious freedom, equal rights, and free speech. 

SEIZED: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as a Medical, Historical, and Artistic Phenomenon. (HarperCollins, 1993; Backinprint.com, 2000)

Featured on NPR's Morning Edition with Neal Conan and in The New York Times and Newsweek.

"A major study," notes Publishers Weekly: "The implications for psychiatry are staggering."

Howard Gardner wrote, "In this fascinating account of medical research, LaPlante shows how a brain scar may cause bizarre aggressive or sexual behavior - and works of profound creative imagination."

In a starred review, Library Journal wrote, "Thoughtful... Highly recommended."

"Four stars..." L.A. Times

According to Kirkus Reviews, "LaPlante’s descriptions of the human brain are wonderfully concrete, her historical research is well presented, and her empathy for TLE’s victims is clear."

"Controversial," according to Newsweek.

Neurology Bulletin described SEIZED as "compelling, engrossing, and intriguing."


SEIZED is a narrative portrait of a common form of epilepsy that can alter personality – temporal lobe epilepsy, or TLE, which crosses the traditional boundaries between neurology and psychology, brain and mind. The book profiles brain experts and TLE patients, both ordinary and famous, including van Gogh, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Lewis Carroll, who turned some of his seizure states into Alice’s "adventures" in Wonderland.