Autumn 2008
Shelf Life
Time Flies
The voice of Reeve Lindbergh — casual, precise, literate, deeply happy and humane — echoes through all the essays in "Forward From Here." Spurred by a milestone birthday, her 60th, Lindbergh writes intimately and affectionately about her life in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, touching on subjects as diverse as reading, her own minor self-indulgences, funerals and turtles.
The "unexpected adventures" that Lindbergh refers to in the title involve a good deal more than simple aging: She explores her reaction to, among other surprises, a brain tumor (benign, successfully removed) and the discovery that her father, the internationally famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, had three secret families in Europe.
She is subtle and serious in writing about this disturbing revelation. Her first reaction, she tells us, was to be furiously angry with her father, who had died before his hidden families were revealed. "My anger was all-consuming, a satisfyingly fiery and right-eous rage, very comforting while it lasted," she writes. "Unfortunately it lasted, in full force, for only about a month."
Then another emotion asserted itself: She wanted to meet her newly discovered kinfolk. Carefully, discreetly, Lindbergh describes visits, the tentative process of getting to know and trust one another, the awful glare of publicity that complicated it all. Ultimately, she declares her intention to move on.
"I may tiptoe away from the closed rooms of the past with all their stories, and move into the present I love so well," she writes, "and then even further, out into the open future, forward from here."
"Forward From Here: Leaving Middle Age — and Other Unexpected Adventures"
by Reeve Lindbergh, 226 pages, hardcover, $24, Simon & Schuster, New York
— Tom Slayton
Crime Spree
Every place, no matter how beautiful and seemingly filled with virtue, has its dark side, the place where poverty, ignorance, misery and violence dwell. This book is a collection of true tales from the dark side of Vermont.
"Vintage Vermont Villainies" reconstructs 10 murders and two mysterious disappearances using court records, newspaper accounts and other sources. Some of the tales involve episodes of shocking cruelty, and author John Stark Bellamy II spares no gruesome detail in the telling.
Amid the mayhem, there are also echoes of a larger history in "Vintage Vermont Villainies":
- The shooting of Elia Corti at a Socialist-Anarchist melee in Barre in 1903 marked the high point of radical unrest in that stone-quarrying city.
- The 1954 electrocutions of Donald Demag and Francis Blair for the murder of Elizabeth Weatherup proved to be the last execution carried out by the state of Vermont.
- The sudden disappearance in 1946 of Paula Welden — a Bennington student who went for a hike on the Long Trail and was never seen or heard from again — so baffled Vermont lawmen that it resulted, in 1947, in the creation of the first statewide police force in Vermont: the Department of Public Safety and the Vermont State Police.
Bellamy describes these and other grisly events in straightforward, utilitarian prose that somehow manages to emphasize the deep horror and revulsion engendered by these tales, even as they hold us spellbound.
"Vintage Vermont Villainies: True Tales of Murder & Mystery from the 19th and 20th Centuries"
by John Stark Bellamy II, 226 pages, paperbound, $13.95, The Countryman Press, Woodstock
— Tom Slayton
The Road Taken
Robert Lee Frost, who went on to become the poet most emblematic of New England — and especially Vermont — began life as a troubled, wayward boy who had a habit of embellishing the truth. That Frost found his way, through writing, and became a great poet is one of the more remarkable literary stories of our time.
Written for young people unfamiliar with the Frost legend, "A Restless Spirit" tells this story with a strong emphasis on the poet's formative years, his unrelenting determination to be a poet, and how that decision shaped his life.
Simple and direct in presentation, the book also explores the creative process at work in Frost as he composed several of his poems, and it skillfully relates their creation to particular times and episodes in the poet's life. Laudably, the book does not turn away from some of the darker aspects of Frost's life — his impulsive, stubborn nature; his quarrels with his wife, Elinor; his imaginative reconstruction of events; his occasional combativeness. Yet the book also makes the subtle point that many of these qualities kept Frost writing.
Although it should not be regarded as a complete, scholarly biography, "A Restless Spirit" is an important addition to the vast amount of writing about Frost. It is also an apt choice for 2008 for Vermont Reads, the statewide, one-book community reading program. For events, including Vermont Reads Day on Sept. 6, and more information on Vermont Reads, visit www.vermonthumanities.org.
"A Restless Spirit: The Story of Robert Frost"
by Natalie S. Bober, 197 pages, revised and expanded edition, paperbound, $14.95, Henry Holt & Co., New York
— Tom Slayton
