Page 32: Short Takes on Five Vermont Books

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 bouquet of pheasants. 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.

Marrying Mongolia

Sas Carey, International Polar Institute Press, 304 pages. $30.

“I like a book where the author doesn’t choose a complicated word where a simple one will do.”

Sas Carey rejected much about her father’s mercurial personality, especially his hair-trigger temper. But his taste in books, summed up by the quote above, seems to have influenced Carey’s own literary style. “I am a plain writer,” she says in her Hemingwayesque memoir Marrying Mongolia. “I just want to document things.”

Indeed, the Middlebury author, documentary filmmaker, surgical nurse, spiritual healer and grandmother has packaged her fascinating life experiences into easily digestible bites. They range from her first transcontinental journey as an infant riding in a laundry basket from Washington State to Connecticut in her father’s decrepit Model A Ford to a trek into the mountains of northern Mongolia on a reindeer. Her book is less a narrative with a single destination than a bundle of postcards sent from far-flung locales.

Why “marrying” Mongolia? Unlike Carey’s husbands and partners, the remote and rugged east Asian country seems to be the life companion that will stay with her forever, embedded in her soul.

— K.P.

The Watermelon Story

Written by Georgiana de Rham and illustrated by Carolyn Dreyer, Onion River Press, 32 pages. $12.99.

We are going to be the most talked about watermelons of the year.

Children’s stories often conjure imaginary worlds in which inanimate objects feel, think and speak as if they were human. In her picture book The Watermelon Story, Georgiana de Rham reveals the firsthand perspective of a crop of watermelons on a Champlain Valley farm.

The book begins in deep winter with the farmers’ excitement as they plant seeds in “cocoons of nutritious soil.” As days lengthen and warm, the melon seedlings start “itching to get outside into the ground.”

De Rham ably demonstrates the knowledge she has gained working on several Vermont farms, though the text is a little dense for a picture book format. Carolyn Dreyer’s colorful, animated illustrations help carry the tale, depicting the varied community that tends, prepares and eats the delicately striped fruits with curlicue vines.

After almost a year, a final pair of watermelon lasts until the woodstove once again warms the house. “We survived for months,” one marvels, “to offer a taste of summer in depths of midwinter.”

—M. P.

It’s This

Laura Foley, Fernwood Press, 100 pages. $17.

that quiet Maine morning / the full tide of grandmotherhood / lapping at my shore.

A peaceful winter landscape, the view from a mountaintop and a late-night Scrabble game are some of the scenes that Laura Foley conjures in her poetry to give the illusion of simplicity. But, like the works of Robert Frost and Mary Oliver, the casually observational poems in Foley’s latest collection, It’s This, subtly suggest deeper conflict. The natural world is merely a lens through which the Pomfret poet explores themes of her own life, including divorce from her husband, exploration of her sexuality and celebration of grandmotherhood.

While the short verses in It’s This can be startlingly intimate, Foley’s rhetoric isn’t entirely internal. She often addresses the reader, inviting them to pay attention to the world and be grateful for it. And she gets the point across with brevity; the poems in the collection rarely exceed a page. This book is the ideal companion during a moment of reflection — maybe by a cozy fire with a warm beverage.

— G.E.

A Tether to This World: Stories & Poems About Recovery

Edited by Erika Nichols-Frazer, Main Street Rag, 195 pages. $17.95.

Gertrie yelps, her face suddenly contorted in panic as she springs to her feet.

Waitsfield resident Erika Nichols-Frazer is the author of Feed Me: A Story of Food, Love and Mental Illness, a memoir about the role of food in helping her recover from anorexia and bipolar disorder. Now, she’s telling other people’s stories of recovery as the editor of A Tether to This World, an anthology of poems and short stories that highlights the diversity of experiences among people with mental illness.

The works vary greatly in style and content. The all-lowercase poem “when i tell people” discusses the social stigma of disclosing a diagnosis. The listicle “11 Times I Should Have Known Something Was Wrong” describes a series of dark memories. The short story “The Beast Files” is a dialogue between two people on a Tinder date who discuss not wanting to have kids for fear of passing on their mental illness. While the authors differ widely in their approaches, each work will leave readers with heightened empathy.

— H.F.

Of Time and Chance: A Love Story of the ’60s

Ruth Porter, Bar Nothing Books, 175 pages. $14.99.

“What was that hippie woman doin here?”

In 2005, Ruth Porter and her husband, Bill, founded Bar Nothing Books to publish her novel The Simple Life. When I wrote about the then 66-year-old author, self-publishing was still a novelty. Today, it’s mainstream — and Ruth Porter is still putting out novels of life in rural Vermont, now with the help of her son. (Bill Porter died in 2022.)

Of Time and Chance takes place in summer 1967. Elsewhere, it’s the “summer of love,” but on a farm in West Severance, Vt., 17-year-old Andy is quietly doing his chores and preparing to go fight in Vietnam with his buddies. Enter Cynthia, the “hippie woman” of our quote, who comes to the farm for fresh milk and ends up teaching Andy a lot about life, love and making his own choices.

It’s a Green Mountain classic, this romance of farm boy and free-spirited flatlander. Porter fleshes it out with the mature perspective of Andy’s grandmother, who supports him in his own small but significant rebellion.

— M.H.