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 charm of finches. 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.
The Pacifist
Lyn Bixby, Rootstock Publishing, 282 pages. $19.99.
“It’s a dangerous time to be a leader.”
It is 1968. Lisa Thompson is doing “a back-to-the-land thing” on her family’s Vermont farm when her brother, an anti-war activist who has been drafted, resists induction, suffers an “accident” and dies. Lisa navigates a labyrinth of corruption and lies as she takes on the U.S. Army and the FBI to find and confront her brother’s killer.
The historical thriller is the debut novel of northern Vermont author Lyn Bixby, who himself protested the Vietnam War and then was drafted, weeks after graduating from Maine’s Colby College in 1969. The combat death of a classmate served as the book’s inspiration. After his discharge, Bixby became a journalist who shared a 1999 Pulitzer Prize. A newspaper editor and a war veteran assist the protagonist in his page-turner, which Kirkus Reviews calls “hard to put down.”
The story may get a bit complicated as its narrative threads converge, as the Kirkus reviewer says, but Bixby has clearly followed an author’s most basic directive: Write what you know.
Everything Alive: Poems
Molly Johnsen, Green Writers Press, 75 pages. $16.95.
My apartment is pointing distance away. Honey, she crouches down, you were alone.
An aging father’s aching back at his sister’s funeral. Sex advice at a clinic amid a declaration of desire. A broken body and the promise of rebirth. These are some of the settings and themes of Everything Alive, a collection of poetry that moves through trauma and recovery with a mixture of confessional, raw honesty and wry humor.
Addison County poet Molly Johnsen’s debut centers on a devastating car accident and the renewed sense of mortality she felt in its aftermath. As she navigates her new reality and tries to make peace with a bruised body and reeling mind, Johnsen documents the process of survival through her descriptive yet stripped-down poems. A strong first collection from the writer and middle school teacher, Everything Alive serves as a treatise on finding one’s way out of the dark.
Breaking Bread and Drinking Martinis: Tales of Sharing and Sharing of Tales
Peter F. Langrock, Onion River Press, 180 pages. $18.95.
I try to avoid restaurants that serve a stingy martini.
Trial lawyer and former Addison County state’s attorney Peter Langrock has argued hundreds of court cases over his 65-year career and drunk many hundreds more martinis over the same period.
Thankfully, Langrock seems to keep the two activities appropriately separated.
The founder of one of Vermont’s oldest law firms has written two previous books about his legal accomplishments. This memoir shines a light on the gustatory adventures of a man who derives great pleasure from food, drink and partaking of both with others.
Langrock’s epicurean tastes are wide-ranging. He describes dining on horse steak in Québec, harvesting and cooking porcupine liver in Vermont, and making friends over oysters in New York City’s Grand Central Station. His taste in dining companions is equally open-minded, including a legal colleague he calls an “equal opportunity bigot.”
Regarding cocktails, Langrock is more particular. From his first sip at age 16 of “that marvelous and crazy drink,” only a large, strong gin martini will do.
Moving to My Dog’s Hometown: Stories of Everything I Didn’t Know I Wanted
Betsy Vereckey, Rootstock Publishing, 244 pages. $18.99.
Never did I think I’d want to move to a small town in New England.
The premise of Betsy Vereckey’s memoir, out this month, is so absurdly precious that Hallmark Channel execs would pass on it as too cloying: Reeling after a divorce, a successful career woman retreats from The City to a charming New England town. But all she knows about the place is that it’s where her dog was born. Several misadventures later, she realizes she’s right where she always belonged. (Cue snowflakes falling on an illuminated town green. Roll credits.)
I mean … come on, right? And yet! The former journalist’s collection of stories about moving from New York City to Hanover, N.H. — yes, the hometown of her Glen of Imaal terrier, Ronan — is far more entertaining and insightful than its setup would suggest. Vereckey writes with a reporter’s observational eye, an essayist’s heart and a divorcée’s skewering wit. Inspired by the love of a dog, this is a feel-good story with some bite.
Freedom for All: What a Liberal Society Could Be
Alex Zakaras, Yale University Press, 336 pages. $38.
Freedom requires access to a broad range of secure and desirable options.
A decade ago, it would have been superfluous to write a book expounding on the importance of freedom, equality and the rule of law. That was before the second Trump administration and its authoritarian assaults on the foundations of democracy. In Freedom for All: What a Liberal Society Could Be, University of Vermont political science professor Alex Zakaras proposes a “radical version of liberalism” that takes aim at this country’s massive inequalities in wealth, opportunity and power.
Zakaras’ “liberalism” refers not to the political left but to an ideology that prioritizes individual freedom and equality and the tools that ensure them, including constitutions, fair elections and a free press. In the book and at a January 14 reading and talk at Phoenix Books in Burlington, he offers a bold vision that addresses Americans’ current economic and political anxieties and describes a more egalitarian and humane future.
At times, Freedom for All is vague and lacks in-depth examples of conflicting freedoms, such as those inherent in vaccine hesitancy versus the demands of public health. Nevertheless, its solutions-based approach is sorely needed.
This article appears in Jan 7-13 2026.
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