Seven Days writers can’t possibly read, much less review, all the books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a tiding of magpies. So this monthly feature is our way of introducing you to a handful of books by Vermont authors. To do that, we contextualize each book just a little and quote a single representative sentence from, yes, page 32.
To Alice
J. Peter Cobb, TouchPoint Press, 254 pages. $15.99.
Alice is looking at her feet. She slides her right foot backward.
What happens when caring too much backfires? In this novel, Alice Hammond, a home health and hospice aide living in the made-up town of Providence, Vt., finds out the hard way when a patient bequeaths to her all of his property and a sizable chunk of change — a potentially life-altering gift for a med school dropout struggling to make ends meet and figure out her path. The troubles start when her patient’s brother accuses Alice of exploiting an elder and threatens legal action.
Barre author J. Peter Cobb vividly captures the details of hospice workers moving through rural landscapes and balancing a life of caring for others while trying to escape their own demons. In Alice’s case, those include a traumatic experience in med school and the expectations of a family who doesn’t understand her struggles. It’s no surprise how accurately Cobb portrays that world, considering his former role as the executive director of Vermont’s Visiting Nurses Association. In To Alice, he shows the perils of putting your heart into something that just might not return the favor.
To Walk Is to See It: 1 Couple, 98 Days, 1400 Miles on Europe’s GR5
Kathy Elkind, She Writes Press, 278 pages. $17.95.
I’m amazed at how the exhilaration of the trip keeps me going.
Mad River Valley author Kathy Elkind is a proponent of the “grown-up gap year.” What better time to walk the GR5 — an approximately 1,400-mile footpath through the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France — than at 57 years old?
Cognizant of their age, Elkind and her husband, Jim, don’t try to replicate the backpacking trips of their twenties. The couple used to pride themselves on being “hardcore.” Now, they opt for warm beds over camping and croissants over more modest breakfast fare.
Even with those accommodations, sickness, language barriers and inclement weather still pose challenges for the couple. Elkind quickly realizes her body is not what it used to be. Meanwhile, Jim seems more than capable of endless walking.
As Elkind documents their trip in this memoir, she writes honestly about the unromantic aspects of aging and the struggle to feel heard in her marriage. Through a travelogue about literally walking, Elkind ends up composing a metaphor about the hopefully long walk through life.
Wild Mind, Wild Earth: Our Place in the Sixth Extinction
David Hinton, Shambhala Publications, 135 pages. $19.95.
Wild in the Christian framework: a term of derision and disgust.
Do not be deceived by the calm blue sky and the soaring cranes on the cover of David Hinton’s Wild Mind, Wild Earth. In case you have not noticed, calmness is in short supply these days, and Hinton underscores why we should be anything but calm as we march toward the cliff of extinction, propelled by the belief that we are not of nature but in control of nature.
Hinton, who lives in East Calais, is a much-honored author, poet and translator specializing in ancient Chinese philosophy and poetry. Along with a college syllabus’ worth of John Muir, William Wordsworth, Aldo Leopold, Dante and John Milton, he marshals Zen Buddhist insights — and one lovely “vast little egret poem” — to help heal the rupture between humans and the Earth. Sadly, Hinton’s erudite analysis only reminded this reader of how deeply Western culture has erred in its conviction that nature exists to serve us.
Attic of Dreams: A Memoir
Marilyn Webb Neagley, Rootstock Publishing, 275 pages. $18.99.
A wall lamp reflects the red color of my woolen blanket, making it a warm place for me to nestle.
Marilyn Webb Neagley began her memoir more than 40 years ago when, as a working mother, she periodically jotted down memories on index cards. The Ascutney native married into the Webb family and became one of the developers of education nonprofit Shelburne Farms, serving as an early president. Compiling her memories, she wrote in the online magazine Women Writers, Women’s Books, was like assembling a quilt: “My bits and pieces appeared as an array of colorful light and somber darkness.”
In short vignettes, Neagley gives readers snapshots of her life: listening for spring peepers, sugaring with friends, building forts in the woods. She shares the less idyllic scenes, too: finding liquor bottles her mother has hidden around the house, hearing her parents fight, learning that a friend was molested by her own father. This intensely personal story is intertwined with an inside look at the founding of one of Vermont’s venerable institutions.
Hubble’s Pasture & the Truth About Cows
Peter K.K. Williams, Onion River Press, 48 pages. $19.99.
Late the following afternoon an observant cow happened to … spot the space station.
Hubble’s Pasture & the Truth About Cows, Hinesburg author and illustrator Peter K.K. Williams’ serenade to Vermont’s most iconic of creatures, reads less like a story than an almanac of the state’s ever-changing landscape and sky. As an ode to the ungulates of the Green Mountains, it’s written with all the love and reverence for bovines of a sacred Hindu text, only with more frivolity.
An astute observer of nature and dairy farmers’ place in it, Williams frolics in the English language like a rambunctious heifer romping in a summer meadow. The Leonid meteor shower shoots “cosmic spitballs.” The barn floor simmers as a “glutenous porridge.” Cows vigorously empty their bladders “with an impressive display of savoir-faire.”
Williams generously drops bovine insights that are factual — such as that cows in a pasture inexplicably tend to orient themselves along magnetic north-south lines — and facetious: “Jersey cows are Yankee fans … while Holsteins prefer the Red Sox.”
For cow and nature lovers, this one will be an udder delight to read and ruminate upon.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2023.
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