Book of the Week (5/13/2019)

The Grifter, the Poet, and the Runaway Train: Stories from a Yankee Writer's Notebook by Geoffrey Douglas (Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press, 2019).

Dublin, New Hampshire's own Yankee Magazine has been in existence since 1935, providing readers with interesting stories and tidbits about New England food, living and travel. Author Geoffrey Douglas has been a Yankee Magazine contributor since the late 1990s.

"There are seventeen stories here, reported and written over roughly twenty years. All of them unfold within the six states of New England, though they could as easily have happened anywhere. Several recount public events, widely reported: a Maine town turning against itself under the weight of an influx of Somalis, a fatal fire in Worcester MA, a Vermont reporter’s defense of marriage equality, resulting in a Pulitzer Prize. Others, the majority, are more private, the stories of men and women surviving, facing choices, living life: a small-time jockey scratching out an existence at county-fair racetracks; a local police chief’s terrible moral quandary; a Massachusetts poet’s love affair with his town. A few are essays, the most recent a mapping of a young man’s path toward suicide.
Some have won honors. A story on the nine-day life of a half-formed infant — and his parents’ struggle to understand — was a National Magazine award finalist; a piece detailing the double life of a Boston office worker was a selection for Best American Sports Stories. Several have been anthologized.
The best of these, taken together, make for a rich collection of New England portraits: mostly ordinary lives, upended by choice or chance, turned suddenly, unexpectedly remarkable. One or two would qualify as period pieces, their contexts already obsolete. If there is a single theme linking them all (other than the region), it is the simple, undressed grit of those involved."-- Publisher's blurb

Join Geoffrey at the following local bookstores where he will be discussing his latest book:

Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 6:00 pm at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, NH
Saturday, June 15, 2019 at 2:00 pm at Toadstool Bookstore in Keene, NH