American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans (Hardcover)

I have to ask... whose idea was it all these years to hide from the grammar and high school American history student the story of Anne Hutchinson? Her biography of conscience and faith is important and should be celebrated in our schools. The image of Anne, articulate and self-assured, standing up to the array of 40 male judges should be as ingrained as the image of honest Abe Lincoln walking back several miles to a store when he noticed he'd been given one penny too much in change.

Read this book. Tell others to read it. And let's get Anne Hutchinson into the school curriculum in the US. LaPlante has done a great service here, so effectively shedding light on Hutchinson's struggle for women's rights and freedom of expression, as well as her outspoken defense of the natives' rights. AMERICAN JEZEBEL of the 1600s has the ring of a modern feminist story, as the issues Hutchinson faced are not so different from issues we face today.

Anne Hutchinson's vision, courage and accomplishments are astonishing. I've been thoroughly captured by this book.

On Anne Hutchinson Day (April 27,an annual gathering at Founders' Brook Park in Portsmouth RI, the settlement she co-founded) Our "Friends" group asks -where is the history of the women who came here in 1638? Even their names seem erased. Our mission is to find, collect and record the lost history of women who left Puritan Boston and followed Anne Hutchinson to this Island as wives, sisters, in-laws or servants. Incredibly, 366 years later, many proud descendants are found here with stories to tell of Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer(a Quaker martyr)and the women Hutchinsonians. (14 names to date and adding) Many in our group have read everything we can on the life of Anne Hutchinson and her era. We believe this new book is an important addition to the few good, older books that are available on her.

Eve LaPlante's "American Jezebel" delivers an account that throws us into the action and weaves us carefully into Hutchinson's world in England, Boston-old world and new- Pocasset(Portsmouth RI) and New York with new detail. Finally an author has given us a meticulously-researched guided tour with maps to the places she lived. I know LaPlante did it well because some of us attempted to research the same areas, including her birthplace in Alford, Lincolnshire England. LaPlante did it right and thoroughly. She seemed to know the interest out there. In this book the early 1600's come alive with the details we want to hear: describing the locales, 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 for a change.

The book provides us with a unique account of how a feisty, literate mother of 16 children leaves the comforts of low-gentry English life, moves to the edge of a wild continent, works as a midwife and counselor to women and evolves into a charismatic spiritual leader who dares to challenge the Boston Magistrates. There is much more after that. I will never again pass "split rock" off the Hutchinson Freeway on the way to Manhattan without a thought to Susan Hutchinson, the seven-year old who hid and waited..that's for the reader to continue.

"American Jezebel" is the book a filmmaker should read

signed Valerie Debrule, Founder,The Friends of Anne Hutchinson