Wednesday, July 17th — 10a.m. at the Yacht Club. We will discuss Northeaster : A Story of Courage and Survival in the Blizzard of 1952 by Cathie Pelletier. Available in hardcover, paperback, audiobook, and on Kindle and as an e-book in many Maine public libraries.  Much of the action takes place in Bath and off-shore locations Down East familiar to most of us.  

Author Steward O’Nan has written about this book: “With its rich cast of fishermen, woodsmen, millworkers and plain old small-town Mainers, Pelletier’s dramatic recreation of the great blizzard of 1952 isn’t simply a fast-paced disaster narrative about the workings of fate, but a paean to a long-lost way of life.”

Wednesday, August 14th — 10a.m. at the Yacht Club. We will discuss two books:  Tom Lake by Ann Patchett and Our Town by Thorton. Wilder. Tom Lake is available in hardback, audiobook and large print in most area public libraries.  Our Town is available in paperback, as a PBS Home Video DVD, and in most area public libraries.  

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before children were born.  Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.  It features a summer theatre troupe putting on a production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. Our Town, which according to Edward Albee is “the greatest American play ever written”  presents the fictional town of Grover’s Corners between 1901 and 1913 through the everyday lives of its citizens.  Katy Waldman of the “New Yorker” has written that a big portion of the book’s (Tom Lake) soul resides in Our Town.  Hence, the decision to combine the two in our discussion.  

Happy Reading
The Literary Committee