Book of the Week (12/2/2019) and more...

This is what we all learned in school: Pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. They had a rough start, but ultimately made a go of it, made friends with the Indians, and celebrated with a big Thanksgiving dinner. Other uptight religious Puritans followed them and the whole place became New England. There were some Dutch down in New York, and sooner or later William Penn and the Quakers came to build the City of Brotherly Love in Pennsylvania, and finally it was 1776 and time to revolt against King George III and become America. That's it. That's the narrative of American colonial history known to one and all. Yet there are 150 years - six or seven generations between Plymouth Plantation and the 1770s - that are virtually unknown in our national consciousness and unaccounted for in our American narrative. Who, what, when, where and why people were motivated to make a two-month crossing on the North Atlantic to carve a life in a largely uncharted, inhospitable wilderness? How and why did they build the varied societies that they did here in the New World colonies? How and why did we become America? America's Forgotten Colonial History tells that story. -- Publisher's blurb.

    

Go West, Young Man. Isn't that the advice every east coast boy has considered at least once in his life? At nineteen, almost twenty, Ron Bancroft thinks those words sound pretty good. Newly out as transgender, Ron finds himself adrift: kicked out by his family, jilted by his girlfriend, unable to afford to return to college in the fall. So he heads out to Wyoming for a new start, a chance to prove that--even though he was raised as a girl, even though everyone in Boston thinks of him as transgender--he can live as a man. A real man.
In Wyoming, he finds what he was looking for: rugged terrain, wranglers, a clean slate. He also stumbles into a world more dangerous than he imagined, one of bigotry and violence. And he falls for an intriguing young woman, who seems as interested in him as he is in her. Thus begins Ron's true adventure, a search not for the right place in America, but the right place within himself to find truth, happiness, and a sense of belonging. -- Publisher's blurb.

    

Keene is, first and foremost, a city of reinvention. Since its founding in 1736, it has prospered as an agricultural community, an industrial and transportation center, the home of a major state college, and, most recently, a hub for culture and the arts. Throughout all these changes, it has remained resilient, and many of the older buildings are still there, repurposed to new businesses. This volume traces those changes and shows how the past is still inextricably intertwined with the present. -- Back cover.

    

"Ball of String is Glenn Currie’s just released fourth collection of poems and color photographs.
His readable approach to his poetry and willingness to work in a variety of poetic styles has proven very popular and resulted in the sale of thousands of his books in New Hampshire.
His focus in many of his books is how our lives are connected to each other and to the world which we share. Whether they are the ties of flesh and blood or the ways we choose to live. Currie writes about his journey through life, and about the many strings that connect all of us through shared experiences, emotions, the need for humor, and the things we learn from our travels on this earth.
Ball of String contains many prize-winning poems and beautiful photographs that take us to places where we can reflect on life’s journey. We may arrive here and leave here alone, but the journey between is the precious gift that we have been given. Take some time to treasure it as you enter into the introspective fields of Currie’s poems and photographs." -- Publisher's blurb

    

This richly researched collection of linked short stories transports readers to the midway of a carnival traveling through the Jim Crow South where we meet the carnival owners, a carousel operator, the geek, dancing girls, several performers displayed as oddities and the African American laborers charged with tending them. The final story crosses the ocean, underscoring the the power and mystery of unexpected connections. Lyrical descriptions of the physical environs and the emotional landscape of each character function like a funhouse mirror, providing just enough distance and distortion to see ourselves more clearly. The sharply striated world of a century ago aptly reflects the tensions, divisions, and perennial shared yearning for redemption and belonging that mark us as human. -- Publisher's Blurb.