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
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
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
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
Deep Water: Murder, Scandal, and Intrigue in a New England Town by Kenneth M. Sheldon
Wicked New Hampshire by Renee Mallett
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.
