Here I am at the end of my journey, traveling through New England during a glorious fall. I’m not sure why I have taken the path that I did to have me end here as the air is turning crisp and the leaves are presenting a beautiful mosaic, but I like it! Even if the books I’m reading are not set during autumn, my spirit overlays the mood since this is MY time of year.
Starting in Connecticut, I plan on reading “The Shadow Box” by Luanne Rice. The story is about an artist who is about to reveal a dark secret that her husband, running to be the Governor, has viciously kept. She is attacked by a masked man in her home and barely escapes with her life to disappear into the woods, but now she doesn’t know who she can trust. With all of his wealth and political connections, her husband seems to hold all of the power.
In Rhode Island, I will read “Trial by Fire: A Devastating Tragedy, 100 Lives Lost, and a 15 Year Search for the Truth” by Scott James. When I think of fires, I think of the library at Alexandria, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire or the Great Chicago Fire. Even though the fire at a nightclub, The Station, occurred in my lifetime (2003) it didn’t even register on my radar even though it was horrific with 100 fatalities and over 200 injuries, many of them severe and lifelong. It all began when the band, “The Great White” decided to use pyrotechnics in a closed space, but that is just part of the story.
Moving on to Massachusetts, I’m reading “Golden Girl” by Elin Hilderbrand. Vivian Howe is a writer living in Nantucket. She is divorced with three grown, or mostly grown, children. She’s making life work until she is killed in a hit and run accident. She is assigned to “Martha” in the afterlife and given the rest of the summer to see how her children’s lives will move on. She is also given three “nudges” to be able to make one last difference in their lives.
In Vermont, perhaps I will learn how to catch a frog and so much more in “How to Catch a Frog; And Other Stories About Family, Love, Dysfunction, Survival and DIY” by Heather Ross. In this memoir, Ross tells about growing up in an unconventional family in rural Vermont during the 1970s. She tells about how she used her life stories in the beautiful woods, with its lack of immunizations, authority, and stability to create her life with honesty. She also incorporates small tutorials throughout the book.
For New Hampshire, I’m reaching back a bit to read the poems of Robert Frost in “New Hampshire,” originally written in 1923 and it won him the Pulitzer Prize. This book will do double duty for me and also fulfill the requirement for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge, task #20: read a book of nature poems. I love Frost, and this is one I haven’t read before.
And finally: my last stop on this tour is in Maine. “Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story: Remaking a Life from Scratch” is a memoir by Erin French. She grew up on a farm in Maine where she fell in love with food. Her struggle to eventually open a world class destination restaurant took her through single motherhood, a marriage to a man who went from savior to tormentor, and an addiction that threatened everything. Her son was her guiding light that helped her to eventually rebuild her entire world from the ground up.
Well, that’s it. That’s my journey. I have thoroughly enjoyed it and I have enjoyed sharing it with you. You can find more titles for a New England adventure here and you can find other blog posts in this series at this link for “Travel Through Story.” So long until the next adventure.
Image Credit: Henry Gessau, Milford, New Hampshire, USA, Suspension Bridge via Wikimedia Commons (license)
