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 conspiracy of ravens. So this occasional 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.
Winters’ Time: A Secret Pledge, a Severed Head, and the Murder That Brought America’s Most Famous Lawyer to Vermont
Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Vermont Historical Society, 123 pages. $19.95.
John Winters did not look like the crowd thought a murderer should look.
It’s a good thing the author of Winters’ Time is Jeffrey L. Amestoy, former chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. Otherwise, readers might not believe the true tale he tells: In 1926, a leading citizen of Windsor is brutally beaten to death. Authorities charge local John Winters with her murder, on the flimsiest of evidence. To sway the jury, prosecutors display the victim’s severed head in open court. Winters faces death in the electric chair — until Clarence Darrow, then America’s best-known lawyer, steps in. And, we learn, Darrow took the case only because of a promise his son made decades earlier to Winters’ aunt.
Prosecutorial overreach, a corrupt sheriff, legal incompetence, class prejudice, a deus ex machina in the form of Darrow — Amestoy’s recounting of this forgotten chapter in Vermont history will leave readers shaking their heads. It’s a page-turner and a valuable portrait of small-town life inside and outside the courtroom in the 1920s.
— Candace Page
Ducks on the Pond
Amy Klinger, the Story Plant, 272 pages. $16.95.
“Reuben, do you know if she had eaten from the fork before she stabbed you?”
An “aggressive silverware incident” in the dining room of a Vermont B&B leaves Reuben Downes with an injury that could threaten his successful, if uninspired, art career. But it also prompts a prolonged stay in that B&B and a fresh start free from his ex, who had eaten some pancakes before he turned down her marriage proposal.
Reviewing Amy Klinger’s first novel, In Light of Recent Events, Seven Days said Klinger “clearly knows her suburban New Jersey setting well.” Her second makes it obvious the Richmond author understands small-town Vermont, too, from fictional Orrville’s overly competitive coed softball league to the tense social fabric that flatlander Reuben navigates — and agitates — in his new home.
The book gives life lessons in the form of softball vignettes, and its humorous prose flows along easily — even as the products of Reuben’s artistic practice transform from waiting-room landscapes into something on a much larger, more political scale.
— Jordan Barry
Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares, University of California Press, 320 pages. $29.95.
Undocumented workers … are understandably hesitant to speak up when their basic rights are violated.
Ask shoppers at the local farmers market if they want a healthy, sustainable food system. “Of course,” they’ll respond, pointing to their basket of organic kale and free-range eggs.
But, write Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and University of Vermont associate professor Teresa Mares, the “good food” movement tends to focus on environmental and health benefits for eaters, with little recognition of the risks to those who produce, process, distribute and prepare food in settings ranging from difficult to dangerous.
Food system jobs are “increasingly occupied by economically vulnerable and marginalized people” with limited power to self-advocate, the authors assert, adding that neither small organic farms nor high-end restaurants are innocent of exploitation.
They cite chilling statistics. New York City food delivery cyclists have the highest rate of work-related deaths. A study of Kroger supermarket workers found 75 percent were food insecure. We all deserve good, affordable food, but not at such steep costs to our fellow humans.
— Melissa Pasanen
The View From the Other Side of My Head: My Education in Shamanic Trance
Seth Steinzor, Green Writers Press, 252 pages. $19.95.
I visualize my body lying in my bedroom, just to reassure myself that I can return to it.
South Burlington author and poet Seth Steinzor worked in the Vermont Attorney General’s Office for about 30 years, focusing on civil rights and Medicaid fraud. Not long after he retired, a former coworker asked for his help with a homework assignment of sorts: As part of learning about shamanism, the practice of communicating with the spirit world, she was tasked with discovering a friend’s “power animal.”
What started as a light curiosity sent Steinzor headlong into a world of dream exploration and heavy reading, ranging from historical shamanistic writings to modern neurological studies, as he endeavored to bridge the gap between his upbringing in Western thought and ancient metaphysical wisdom.
The View From the Other Side of My Head documents the writer’s embrace of shamanism, including dream conferences he held with his ancestors to address lingering pain from a failed marriage and the role of the Holocaust in his familial trauma.
— Chris Farnsworth
The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century
Tim Weiner, Mariner Books, 464 pages. $35.
Luis Rueda began creating a detailed plan of covert action to help overthrow Saddam Hussein.
For almost a decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Central Intelligence Agency suffered an identity crisis. Without its primary adversary, the agency founded in 1947 didn’t know where to focus its intelligence assets or gargantuan financial resources. That is, until 1998, when a little-known militant group in Afghanistan called al-Qaeda simultaneously bombed two U.S. embassies half a world away. The bombings demonstrated a level of sophistication not previously seen in an international terrorist group, foreshadowing the attacks of 9/11. The CIA recalibrated from fighting communism and narcotics to Islamist extremism.
The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century is a follow-up to Tim Weiner’s 2007 National Book Award winner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter living in Putney, Weiner has penned a riveting history of the agency for anyone fascinated by real-life global espionage. Sourced from exclusive interviews with six former CIA directors, The Mission is highly readable, enlightening and chillingly timed.
— Ken Picard
This article appears in Nov 5-11 2025.
