Merrimack Valley Magazine

Holiday Reads – Books by Local Authors

December 13, 2021 by Emilie-Noelle Provost

Weeding through the titles in your local bookstore or, even worse, on Amazon to find holiday gifts for the book lovers in your life can be daunting. If your usual solution is to head for the bookstore gift cards, take heart. We’ve got your back with this list of fiction, nonfiction and children’s titles by local authors.

Women’s Fiction

“The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane” By Katherine Howe (Hachette, 2009)
Set partly in modern-day Andover and partly in the Merrimack Valley during the Salem witch trials, Howe’s supernatural love story is packed with suspense and surprises, and serves as a reminder that the witch trials took place across the region, not only in Salem.

“Evenfall” By Liz Michalski (Berkley, 2011)
Haverhill resident (and mvm contributor) Liz Michalski’s debut novel, set in rural Connecticut, explores the power love has to heal and redeem broken relationships, even beyond the grave.

“Folly Cove” By Holly Robinson (Berkley, 2016)
The latest by Rowley’s Holly Robinson is set in Rockport and tells the story of four sisters who reunite to celebrate their mother’s birthday, only to have painful family secrets revealed.

Thrillers/Crime

“Spouses & Other Crimes” By Andrew Coburn (Stark House Press, 2014)
Fans of Andover’s crime fiction master will love his latest, a short-story collection featuring all the grit and sublime detail that made him famous as the author of full-length thrillers.

“A Ronan Marino Mystery: Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde” By Lloyd Corricelli (CreateSpace, 2015)
Tewksbury native Lloyd Corricelli teamed up with local comic artist Alex Cormack to create this graphic novel version of the first book in his Ronan Marino crime series.

“The Vaults” by Toby Ball (Thorndike Press, 2011)
The first installment in the City Trilogy by Durham, N.H., writer Toby Ball, the book is set in the 1930s and involves an archivist, a journalist and a private eye who launch an investigation into their city’s corrupt administration.

“Stone Angels” by Michael Hartigan (Merrimack Media, 2015)
The Stoneham resident’s latest book tells the story of college student Augustine Shaw and his attempt to escape tragic circumstances, including two murders. Hartigan is the communications director for U.S. Congresswoman Niki Tsongas.

Nonfiction

“Armenians of the Merrimack Valley” By E. Philip Brown and Tom Vartabedian (Arcadia, 2016)
Armenians were among the immigrants who came to the Merrimack Valley after World War I to work in the mills. They created vibrant communities in Haverhill, Lowell and Lawrence, and their presence is still felt today.

“Where Divers Dare: The Hunt for the Last U-Boat” By Randall Peffer (Berkley, 2016)
Phillips Academy writing teacher Randall Peffer is the author of several books, many with nautical themes. His latest details the harrowing search for the wreck of German submarine U-550, which was sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy off of Nantucket in April 1944.

“Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston’s Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America” By Jay Atkinson (Lyons Press, 2015)
In 1697, Haverhill resident Hannah Duston was kidnapped by American Indians who killed her infant daughter. Two weeks later, Duston killed several of her captors and escaped down the Merrimack River in a canoe. Methuen writer and Boston University lecturer Jay Atkinson recounts her incredible story.

Historical Fiction

“Royal Mistress: A Novel” By Anne Easter Smith (Touchstone, 2013)
Arguably one of America’s best historical novelists, Anne Easter Smith of Newburyport hits another home run with her latest, a 500-plus-page epic that tells the story of Jane Shore, the young wife of a silk merchant in 15th century England who becomes the mistress of King Edward IV.

“The Altarpiece” By Lauren Fogle Boyd (Lucky Bat Books, 2013)
UMass Lowell history professor Lauren Fogle Boyd’s novel takes readers back to the Third Reich, when art was a political issue and young art historian Anke Junger, daughter of Nazi-persecuted modern artist Dietrich Junger, is thrown into a world
of danger and intrigue in her efforts to keep the famous Ghent Altarpiece out of Hitler’s reach.

Memoir

“Townie: A Memoir” By Andre Dubus III (W.W. Norton & Co., 2011)
Fans of Andre Dubus III’s work will not want to miss the author’s intimate, sometimes brutal yet ultimately uplifting story of his life growing up the child of divorced parents on the rough edges of 1970s Haverhill and Newburyport.

“The Years of Zero: Coming of Age Under the Khmer Rouge” By Seng Ty (CreateSpace, 2014)
Lowell resident Seng Ty tells the devastating, moving story of his family’s exile and ultimate extermination by the Communist Khmer Rouge regime in late-1970s Cambodia – a must-read for anyone seeking to better understand the Cambodian genocide.

“Crash: A Mother, A Son And The Journey From Grief To Gratitude” By Carolyn Roy-Bornstein (Skirt!, 2012)
Newburyport pediatrician Carolyn
Roy-Bornstein found herself on the other side of the stretcher one winter night when her son and his girlfriend were hit by a drunken driver. The book recounts her family’s journey helping her son recover from a brain injury, and how they learned to cope when their lives were forever changed in an instant.

Children/Young Adult

“The Face in the Frost” By John Bellairs (MacMillan, 1969)
Now-deceased Haverhill young adult author John Bellairs was considered a master of Gothic fantasy. Perhaps his best-known novel, “The Face in the Frost” is a tale of wizards, kings, an adventurer, and a power that is beyond their control.

“The Bobbin Girl” By Emily Arnold McCully (Dial Books, 1996)
Set in 19th century Lowell, “The Bobbin Girl” tells the story of a young mill worker, her struggle to survive horrible working conditions, and how she found the courage to protest a pay cut.

“Bread and Roses, Too” By Katherine Paterson (Clarion Books, 2006)
“Bread and Roses, Too” is a fictionalized account of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence told from the perspective of the young daughter of Italian immigrants.

For reviews of several books listed in this article, browse our Art & Entertainment section.

Literary Spotlight – Loom Press

November 14, 2021 by Emilie-Noelle Provost

This independent publisher has been helping local writers get their work into the hands of readers since 1978.

Any writer who has tried to get their work published knows how tough it can be. Even with the help of a literary agent, finding a publisher for a novel or short story collection can often take years, if one is found at all. And in an industry where large corporate publishing houses often swallow up independent publishers, the books that do end up being published are often chosen for their potential to turn a profit rather than for their artistic or academic merit.

Writers aren’t the only ones who are missing out. Some would argue that the way the contemporary publishing industry does business has resulted in a lack of variety and fewer voices and ideas on bookstore shelves. It makes one wonder how many great works of literature are languishing on hard drives and in desk drawers.

But all hope is not lost. Although they’re not always visible, independent publishers are still putting out work by new and lesser-known authors. Founded in 1978 by Lowell native Paul Marion, Loom Press emerged from Marion’s involvement with Merrimack Valley Poets in the mid- to late-1970s. The informal writers’ collective met regularly at the Andover Public Library and offered poetry readings to the public.

“In the mid-1970s, small presses were really hot. [Starting a publishing company] felt very populist and grass roots — someone just starting out could get their work in print,” says Marion, who has written several books and is a prolific poet. “Quick-print shops were opening. We could do it without a lot of money.”

During its first several years, Loom Press focused on poetry chapbooks. The small press published its first full-length paperback in 1984: a poetry collection by Marion called “Strong Place.” From there, Marion says, the press evolved to publish other types of work by a variety of writers. For the last several years, Loom Press has published five or six books a year, all of them by authors who have some type of connection to the Greater Merrimack Valley region.

Lowell photographer Jim Higgins is among several local authors who have been connected to readers through Loom. His 2020 book, “North & South Ireland: Before Good Friday & the Celtic Tiger,” features photographs of Ireland in the 1980s. Loom published a short story collection, “Smokestack Lightening,” by Lowell author Stephen O’Connor in 2010, and “Sweeny in Effable,” a collection of novellas by Irish American author Dave Robinson, in 2016.

The small press has also put out several books of poetry by local writers, including “On Earth Beneath Sky” in 2020 by Cambodian American poet Chath pierSath. “Mid Drift,” a collection of poems about post-industrial Lowell by Kate Hanson Foster, was published by Loom in 2011.

Loom Press has also branched out into nonfiction. “The Power of Non-Violence: The Enduring Legacy of Richard Gregg,” a biography of the world-famous peace activist by UMass Lowell political science professor John Wooding, was published by Loom in October 2020. This November, Loom is scheduled to release “The Artist and the Orchard,” a memoir by orchardist Linda Hoffman, the owner of Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio in Harvard.

Marion, who worked as the executive director of community and cultural affairs at UMass Lowell until his retirement in 2016, says that according to Loom Press’ printer, book sales in the U.S. have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. “The younger generation that ‘discovered’ vinyl [records] is now discovering paper books,” Marion says.

This trend, along with Marion having more time to dedicate to book publishing since his retirement, has resulted in Loom Press increasing the number of titles it releases each year to between 10 and 12.

“We’ve stepped up the volume and are doing a better job getting our books noticed,” says Marion, who lives in Amesbury. “We’ve had a few books mentioned recently in The Boston Globe. Online commerce and social media have completely changed our business model. Our authors are willing and able to help promote their work.”

When it comes to finding new authors to work with, Marion says Loom sometimes publishes unsolicited material submitted via the form on its website, but it’s not the primary way the press finds new authors or acquires fresh material.

“You have to write a lot of rejection letters,” Marion says. “Once in a while we get something out of the blue, but some people’s work just isn’t ready to be published. [The way we find new work] is really more organic. We have enough authors now that they’re like an informal referral service, recommending projects by other writers they know.”

Marion’s latest contribution to the local literary scene is a journal called The Lowell Review that was launched this past summer. The publication is an offshoot of the RichardHowe.com blog, a popular online journal that has been publishing a variety of work by “voices from Lowell and beyond” — from news, to opinion, to poetry and fiction — since 2007. “We wanted to present the best of the blog’s material in a more permanent structure,” Marion says. “We also felt that the region deserved to have its own literary journal.”

The Lowell Review, which Marion co-edits with Howe, is available in electronic and print formats and includes essays, poems, stories and visual art by writers and artists from the Merrimack River watershed. The second issue of the journal will be released in March.

Loom Press books can be purchased via their website and from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. Select titles are also available at local bookstores.

“We see ourselves as part of the cultural ecosystem of the Merrimack Valley,” Marion says. “At age 67, I’ve been doing this for a long time. The literary vitality here is stronger than I’ve ever seen it. We’re operating at the most robust level we’ve ever been.”

Loom Press
(978) 551-8286
LoomPress.com

Book Review – On Earth Beneath Sky

March 30, 2021 by Doug Sparks

At first glance, the poems and sketches in Chath pierSath’s latest collection, “On Earth Beneath Sky,” betray an old-fashioned reverence for literary figures whose critical cachet may be on the wane. This is most noticeable in the references to Lowell’s own Jack Kerouac but, in terms of kinship, Walt Whitman is the key figure. Traces of that great poet’s melding of incantation, the erotic and the patriotic can be found throughout.

Patriotism? Among contemporary poets? Hold on, you might say. But pierSath seems enamored of the possible America, the alternative America, and he elevates American ideals of freedom and prosperity to spiritual heights, even writing of it in celestial terms. This is refreshing during our period of harsh social divisiveness. However, it isn’t simple. It’s a patriotism of aspiration — a longing for the America of books and bards — an idealized vision free from the torments of cruelty, loneliness and rootlessness. pierSath knows this. As he says in one poem: “Doubts pencil-mark my American landscape.”

For those unfamiliar with the author, it’s worth noting that he is, aside from a poet, a visual artist whose work has been shown internationally, and also a fruit and vegetable farmer now living in Bolton, Mass. He came to the United States at the age of 11, a refugee fleeing the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide. He first lived in Boulder, Colorado, eventually arriving, via Cambodian return, in Lowell, where he lived for seven years and discovered the works of the aforementioned Kerouac and the “Song of the Open Road.”

So when I refer to this volume as being “old-fashioned,” I mean that as high praise, and in recognition of its author’s position as a self-taught artist, caught between two cultures, a witness to horrible violence (his father, a solider, died when pierSath was 2) who finds solace in his outsider status and, despite personal trauma, through books and the imagination. pierSath, whose name means “temple of the nation,” uses poetry as a means to raise Big Questions and to wrangle truth with a capital T. Like Whitman and Kerouac, he is magnetized by travel, and the poems veer from Phnom Penh to Lowell to Paris, although this takes on added meaning when considered in the light of his childhood. He is also, unlike Kerouac but much like Whitman, a nature poet, although here he has a wider range of subjects: Settings include the purple mountains and Iowa cornfields of the American drifter, but also the monsoons, rice fields and waterfalls of a writer attuned to the subtle operations of the earth, no matter where the political borders are drawn.

On Earth Beneath Sky
By Chath pierSath
Loom Press
143 pages

pierSath was recently the guest on The 495 Podcast.
Click here to listen. >>>

Book Review – Cummiskey Alley

March 15, 2021 by Doug Sparks

“Cummiskey Alley” contains a broad selection of Lowell poems by Tom Sexton, a Northern Essex Community College graduate who went on to found the creative writing program at the Anchorage campus of the University of Alaska and publish many volumes of verse. At the end of this collection, in a short prose piece titled “On Becoming a Poet,” Sexton writes: “I have lived in Alaska for most of my adult life, but it has never shaped me the way my hometown, Lowell, Massachusetts, did and still does.” That line says much about the poetry in this book.

These are poems filled with remembrance and layers of history, and seem like faded postcards. How do you make poetry out of the stuff of Lowell? Well, often it begins with images of the forlorn, dull and broken down. Dead ends: economic, literal. But this is just the surface. Look deeper and you see a woman getting her nails done, spreading her hands “like a peacock spreads its tail to show its feathers to the world,” a man waking up at night for a chance encounter with a passing gaggle of geese, or a pot of milk, “heating on the stove for hot chocolate with drifts of cream like snow.”

The poems echo the thoughts of a solitary wanderer who experiences the world through his feet and is searching for moments in which the present dissolves into a past that might evoke pleasant memories or flash insight into what we have become.

Sexton expounds on this relationship between the city past and present in “On Becoming a Poet,” writing, “When I can, I walk Lowell’s streets accompanied by ghosts who can be surprisingly good company.” Sexton, now 80, details a 2019 amble through the city, launched from an Oak Street Airbnb in the neighborhood where he grew up. “I had a good visit,” he notes, “but the Lowell of my youth is gone.” After standing outside the shuttered Dana’s Luncheonette, he comes to the realization that he will “never complete another book of poems about my Lowell,” before heading off for a meal of mofongo and Dominican beer. This means that “Cummiskey Alley” may mark the end of Sexton’s long walks with the ghosts of the Mill City. As he continues to publish books of poetry — his 2018 collection “Li Bai Rides a Celestial Dolphin” is excellent — we can anticipate the chance to walk alongside him even if this means leaving Lowell behind. It also makes “Cummiskey Alley” both and introduction and conclusion to one of the great artistic endeavors devoted to our region.

Cummiskey Alley
By Tom Sexton
Loom Press
143 pages

Book Review – Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the Revolution

February 27, 2021 by Doug Sparks

There’s something strange about feminism.

After all, it’s impossible to think of any 20th century social movement that was as successful or influential. There isn’t a single rational human living today who hasn’t been influenced by its core concepts, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone capable of reasonable discussion who doesn’t agree with its underlying principles. In terms of impact alone, it stands supreme among the achievements of human thought. And yet feminism retains its power to ignite controversy and generate heated reactions.

In “Think Like a Feminist,” UMass Lowell associate professor of philosophy Carol Hay brings the reader on a caffeinated tour through the history of feminist thought, and points at its future. Hay handles the topic deftly, and with humor. She has a philosopher’s knack for inverting assumptions, and along the way exposes the layers and nuances of ideas and terms that have been oversimplified in the public discourse.

While it’s an easy read, that doesn’t make it any less unsettling. Given how feminist thinking has evolved into our current century, I was left with an impression of a movement faced with a daunting series of tasks: from seeking economic justice and fixing a situation in which women remain the targets of aggression to overcoming the class and racial biases of its own adherents. The path ahead appears frustratingly complex, but rather than ending the book on a note of despair, Hay addresses small but useful steps we can take to go beyond the realm of ideas and achieve real-world results.

Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the Revolution
By Carol Hay
W. W. Norton & Co.
240 pages