Half My Sky: Autism, Marriage, and the Messiness That Is Building a Family by Carrie Cariello
Where the Water Meets the Sky: A Novel by Diane Les Becquets
Showing posts with label Memoirs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memoirs. Show all posts
6/3/26
2/16/26
Book of the Week (2/16/2026)
Totten chronicles her journey through a childhood shaped by alcoholism, family dysfunction, and emotional isolation, exploring the winding road of forgiveness she finds herself on as an older adult. The narrative spans decades, tackling her struggles with parental abandonment, her mother’s alcoholism, and the silos of silence that defined her family’s communication. Totten’s path to becoming a physician, her relationships, and her quest for self-acceptance and reconciliation form the backbone of this deeply personal story, as, through moments of trauma, resilience, and eventual healing, she reflects on the complexities of family dynamics and the lifelong impact of unresolved pain.
Themes of alcoholism, generational silence, and the search for identity resonate deeply, making the memoir relatable and poignant. Totten’s ability to confront painful truths while seeking understanding and closure is inspiring, and her emotional honesty reverberates throughout. From a young age, she acknowledges that her “need for acceptance overrode everything else”—an admission that echoes both a loss of innocence and an important step in her healing journey. This testament to resilience is ideal for readers interested in family dynamics, addiction recovery, and personal growth. --Publisher's blurb
About the author:
Mary Anne Totten, MD, is a retired physician who practiced primary care, endocrinology, and geriatrics in Boston, Massachusetts; Parkersburg, West Virginia; and Manchester, New Hampshire. After she retired from the practice of medicine in 2015, she was ordained as an interfaith spiritual minister by the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME). She currently volunteers in the Spiritual Care Department in her retirement community in Concord, New Hampshire. She has traveled around the world twice, has lived in eight different states, and visited forty-six of the fifty US states.
Join Mary Anne at Gibson's Bookstore on Thu., March 5, 2026 at 6:30 pm where she will present her new memoir.
1/5/26
Book of the Week (1/5/2026)
Life in recovery isn’t just about giving up alcohol—it’s about learning how to live. In Be The Pig II: Life Lessons In and Out of Recovery, Todd A. Schillinger shares the hard-won lessons he’s learned on the road from addiction to long-term sobriety. With honesty, humor, and heart, Todd explores the challenges, victories, and everyday choices that shape a meaningful life in recovery. This is a book for anyone seeking hope, inspiration, or a reminder that transformation is always possible— one step, one day, and one choice at a time. --Publisher's blurb
About the author:
Todd A. Schillinger is a writer, speaker, and longtime member of the recovery community from Keene, New Hampshire. Sober since October 10, 2006, he shares his story through his books Be The Pig and Be The Pig II: Life Lessons In and Out of Recovery. Todd’s mission is simple: to inspire hope, offer honest insight into the ups and downs of recovery, and remind others that transformation is always possible. When he’s not writing or speaking, he enjoys family, laughter, and the everyday lessons life keeps teaching.
Join Todd at The Toadstool Bookshop in Keene, NH on Friday, January 9, 2026 at 6 pm where he will be presenting his newest book.
12/3/25
3 on a Theme: Mountains 2
White Mountains State: A Four-Year Journey Hiking and Summiting New Hampshire's 48 Highest Peaks by Keith Gentili
My Mountain Friend: Wandering & Pondering Mount Major by Mary Ellen Humphrey
Glorious Mountain Days: The 1902 Hike That Helped Save the White Mountains by Allison W. Bell and Maida Goodwin
11/3/25
Book of the Week (11/3/2025)
Emil, a Jewish man in 1930s Germany, loves Deta, a Lutheran, but Nazi racial purity laws forbid their marriage. Desperate to find a place where their love can survive, they must separate to get away. Deta leaves for England, but Emil has to overcome red tape, resistance from his aging parents, and his own ambivalence before he can embark for America. With only telegrams and letters from Deta to sustain him, he does all he can to bring her and his family to America. But the clock is ticking as the war breaks out and the Nazis tighten their stranglehold.
From the heartbreaking news of November 10, 1938 (Kristallnacht) to the horrific revelations after the German surrender in 1945, Emil’s story runs the course of the war. Can he make his way in this new world? Will he be reunited with his beloved Deta? And will he ever see his family again?
Told by Emil’s daughter with the help of letters and historical documents, All for You is a true story about love overcoming despair and the impact the Holocaust continues to have on the rising generation.-- Publisher's blurb
About the author:
Dena Rueb Romero grew up in Hanover, New Hampshire, the daughter of a Lutheran mother and a Jewish father, both refugees from Nazi Germany. She graduated from Brandeis University and received an MA in English from the University of Virginia and an MSW from Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. "All for You" is her first full-length book. Dena still lives in Hanover, where she sings in a women’s chorus, volunteers at a daycare center, and works with a recently arrived refugee family.
3 on a Theme: NH Memoirs 2
One Man's Family: Growing Up in Peterborough and Other Stories by Sydney M. Williams
Claremont Boy: My New Hampshire Roots and the Gift of Memory by Joseph D. Steinfield
Counter Culture: Clams, Convents and a Circle of Global Citizens by Eleanor Dunfey-Freiburger
9/3/25
3 on a Theme: Concord History
Growing Up in Concord, New Hampshire: Boomer Memories from White's Park to the Capitol Theater by Kathleen D. Bailey & Sheila R. Bailey
Crosscurrents of Change: Concord, N.H. in the 20th Century published by the Concord Historical Society
The Concord Theatre and Concord's Love Affair with the Movies by Paul E. Brogan
7/3/25
3 on a Theme: Wild
Crown of Wild by Erica Bodwell
Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets
What's Wild: A Half Century of Wisdom from the Woods and Rivers of New England by Eric Orff
11/3/24
3 on a Theme: Journalists 2
Cub by Cynthia Copeland
The Grifter, the Poet, and the Runaway Train: Stories from a Yankee Writer's Notebook by Geoffrey Douglas
War Fronts, Home Fires: A WWII Correspondent's Remarkable Coverage, His Wife's Indomitable Spirit by Joseph W. McQuaid
10/28/24
Book of the Week (10/28/2024)
In this sweeping, historical, yet intimate memoir, the author details her family’s transformation from pro-Castro revolutionaries in a scrappy Havana barrio to refugees in a New Hampshire mill town—a timeless and timely tale of loss and reinvention.
Ana Hebra Flaster was six years old when her working-class family was kicked out of their Havana barrio for opposing communism. Once devoted revolutionaries themselves but disillusioned by the Castro government’s repressive tactics, they fled to the US. The permanent losses they suffered—of home, country, and loved ones, all within forty-eight hours—haunted her multi-generational family as they reclaimed their lives and freedom in 1967 New Hampshire. There, they fed each other stories of their scrappy barrio—some of which Hebra Flaster has shared on All Things Considered—to resurrect their lost world and fortify themselves for a daunting task: building a new life in a foreign land.
Weaving pivotal events in Cuba–US history with her viejos’—elders’—stories of surviving political upheaval, impossible choices, and “refugeedom,” Property of the Revolution celebrates the indomitable spirit and wisdom of the women warriors who led the family out of Cuba, shaped its rebirth as Cuban Americans, and helped Ana grow up hopeful, future-facing—American. But what happens when deeply buried childhood memories resurface, demanding an adult’s reckoning?
Here’s how the fiercest love, the most stubborn will, and the power of family put nine new Americans back on their feet. --Publisher's blurb
About the author:
Ana Hebra Flaster has written about Cuba and the Cuban American experience for national print and online media including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Boston Globe. Her commentaries and storytelling have aired on NPR and PBS’s Stories from the Stage. She loves watching birds, walking in the woods, and chatting with just about anyone. After almost forty years in the Boston area, she recently moved back to southern New Hampshire with her husband, Andy, and their dogs, Luna and Beny.
8/19/24
Book of the Week (8/19/2024)
A fiery, heartbreaking, riveting memoir that follows one New Hampshire family over the course of three years, unspooling a story of gender identity, class, trans youth, and a child caught in the riptide of America’s culture wars
Abi Maxwell grew up in rural New Hampshire, one of eight kids in a poor town abutting a wealthier lakeside village. As a young couple, Maxwell and her husband planned not to have kids, but when Maxwell became pregnant, she knew she wanted to raise her child near the mountains and lake of her youth. When her six-year-old, who was known to the world as a boy, asks to wear pink sneakers, asks to be a witch for Halloween, asks to wear a girl’s dance costume, Abi worries about how their small community will react. But when that child changes her name, grows her hair long, and announces that she is a girl, a firestorm engulfs the family.
Weaving together the story of her own youth, marked by long afternoons skiing the mountains, a cottage on the lake, and a proud gay brother, but also by neglect and bullying that pushed her brother to the brink, Abi Maxwell contends with the rural America where she was raised and, years later, where she is now raising her daughter, as lawmakers nationwide push to erase the very existence of trans youth. Intimate and stirring, this book is essential reading for this moment in our history. --Publisher's blurb
About the author:
Abi Maxwell is the author of the novels 'Lake People' and 'The Den'. After graduating from the writing program at the University of Montana, she spent many years working in public libraries, and she now works as a high school librarian. She is a dedicated advocate for the rights of transgender youth in her state and frequently testifies in front of the legislature on their behalf.
Join Abi at Gibson's Bookstore on Tuesday, September 17, 2024 at 6:30 pm where she'll be discussing her newest book!
8/3/24
3 on a Theme: Hiking
Peaks & Paths: A Century of the Randolph Mountain Club by Judith Maddock Hudson
Our Mountain Trips (Part I - 1899 to 1908): Being Authentic Accounts of Camping, Packing, and Tramping in the White Mountains of New Hampshire by Ida Rachel Butterfield James, Lucy Ardena Butterfield, and Walter H. James
See You at the Summit: My Blind Journey from the Depth of Loss to the Heights of Achievement by Randy and Tracy Pierce
6/3/24
Book of the Week (6/3/2024)
Five kids. Autism. Marriage.
Building a family is messy business.
In her most revealing memoir yet, Carrie is candid about the challenges of marriage, motherhood, and keeping one's identity in the midst of raising a family. She gives the reader a glimpse into life with a diagnosed child. She shares their experience with puberty, social media, high school, and steps toward independent living.
Composed as a series of powerful letters, her writing is gritty yet tender. In prose that is nearly poetic, Carrie makes you feel as though you are old friends, sitting down for a cup of coffee and a heartfelt conversation.
She chronicles the journey to find a post-high school opportunity for her son Jack and gives an honest account about the conflict when it comes to letting him go.
She explains how, in this autism life, there is no manual. There are no instructions for how to untether yourself from a tender child who needed you for so long, you forgot what life was like before he disrupted your world in an exquisitely magical way.
Her story will resonate with anyone preparing to transition a child after high school and beyond.
Again and again, Carrie reminds us of a single truth. We are not alone.
You are not alone. --Publisher's blurb
About the author:
Carrie Carielo holds a B.S. in Political Administration, a Master's degree in Public Administration and an MBA. She lives in Bedford, NH with her husband and five children.
3/18/24
2/19/24
Book of the Week (2/19/2024)
Farm Girl is a memoir of urgent grace that crosses boundaries of genre and time. In her second year of college, Megan finds herself bonded to a lover spiraling into addiction and two thousand miles away from her heart’s home—a stretch of forty certified-organic acres along the banks of the Connecticut River separating Vermont and New Hampshire. In the crucible of a rainy Portland winter, Megan is forced to decide whether to embrace her future as a farm girl or to continue growing into the woman everyone hopes she’ll become. Farm Girl is about two love affairs that force a decision: the love between two people and the love between Megan and the landscape. With innovative prose and lush description, Farm Girl raises the earth up as a character and asks questions about the work we choose to sustain us—how careful attention and devotion to the earth transcends human tragedy. -- Publisher's blurb
About the author:
Megan has won numerous national awards including a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been listed in The Best American Essays of 2019. Recent publications included pieces in The Threepenny Review, Hotel Amerika, The Florida Review, and Creative Nonfiction Magazine.
Megan mentors young writers and loves developing cross-genre and innovative creative writing pedagogy for her workshops and classes. Megan lives in New Hampshire, running her own small, organic farm and teaching creative writing.
10/3/23
3 on a Theme: Scandals
Celibacy, a Love Story: Memoir of a Catholic Priest's Daughter by Mimi Bull
Deep Water: Murder, Scandal, and Intrigue in a New England Town by Kenneth M. Sheldon
Wicked New Hampshire by Renee Mallett
9/11/23
Book of the Week (9/11/2023)
Candid and poignant, humorous and heart-wrenching, in nomadic fashion, the directionless Butt Family chaotically relocated throughout the city of Laconia, New Hampshire, like a ship, adrift and lost at sea without a captain.
Encumbered by night terrors, hauntings, and scraps of memories that spoke to a cruelty beyond her mother, Becky sneakily devoured her way into young adulthood and developed a crippling, yet all too comforting, binge-eating disorder.
Morbidly obese, visited often by a seething presence, and drowning under the smothering symptoms of childhood trauma, Becky is sure she’s the defective link in her broken family-until her ghost relative provides her a life jacket of hope that may just keep her afloat. --Publisher's blurb
About the author:
As a young child, Rebecca escaped into books, and wrote happy stories accompanied by bright and cheerful pictures with houses, trees, flowers, and birds, that were a contradiction to her real-life circumstances. Her childhood love for reading and writing endured, and she eventually wrote and published her short stories and poetry in a literary journal in college. Lipstick on a Pig is her lengthiest writing endeavor. A licensed Speech Language Pathologist with a master’s degree in communication sciences and disorders, she is the Director of Special Education for a school district in New Hampshire, where she resides.
Join Rebecca Butt as she discusses and launches her new book, "Lipstick on a Pig" at Bookery Manchester on Sep. 24, 2023 from 10:30 am - 12:00 pm.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
