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 snowy owl flying to the tune of “Hedwig’s Theme” by Oscar-winning composer John Williams. 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.
Modern Vermont Innkeeping: A Memoir, a Modern Family, and 26 Years of Unexpected Adventures at the North Hero House
Walter Blasberg, Onion River Press, 250 pages. $24.95.
When he opened the door to the rear room, it was filled with smoke.
There was a whole lot of orange shag carpet to rip up when Walter Blasberg, a summer resident of the Champlain Islands with a successful investment management career, bought the North Hero House in 1997. Replacing it was a small part of the structural upgrade and complete redecoration he then embarked on — all of which was almost derailed by a fire in the third-story eaves the month before reopening.
Blasberg sold the lakeside lodging and its two associated restaurants on North Hero’s main drag in 2022. Modern Vermont Innkeeping, a memoir written in retirement, recounts the property’s history as well as his own later-in-life coming-out story. Like black shale tossed across the lake from the inn’s Steamship Pier, Blasberg skips gracefully from one recollection to another. The result is conversational, as though Blasberg is welcoming a guest at the inn, handing over a dose of local color along with the room key.
A Failure of Imagination: How the Healthcare System Fails Neurodivergent People — and What We’re Doing Instead
Melissa Marotta Houser, Beaver’s Pond Press, 336 pages. $21.95.
I knew what it was like to be on the other side of the exam room door.
Dr. Melissa Marotta Houser graduated from medical school with virtually no training in autism. Because most of the signs she was taught to look for appear in only a small percentage of people who are autistic, Houser often didn’t spot it in her patients. It wasn’t until she was 37 that she herself was diagnosed with autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other conditions that she now puts under the rubric of “neurodivergence.”
In 2021, when Houser launched her Montpelier medical practice, All Brains Belong, she vowed never to treat her patients the way she’d been treated by the medical establishment: disbelieved, invalidated, ignored and traumatized because she didn’t fit the mold of what’s considered “normal.”
A Failure of Imagination traces Houser’s path to discovering a more compassionate approach to medicine. But the broader lessons in her book apply to anyone who interacts with the American health care system — that is, all of us.
Asa James
Jodi Lew-Smith, Köehler Books, 294 pages. $28.95.
“They should have told you. Before you learned like this.”
Hardwick author Jodi Lew-Smith’s debut novel, Asa James, transports readers to 1875 Vermont, where the 23-year-old title character resists the tethers of the only world he has known: the poor farm where he grew up. Forced to work as a cooper’s apprentice, Asa wants to study science, a pursuit deemed frivolous when there are mouths to feed. “Learning a trade is your privilege, not your prison,” he is told by the farm’s cheesemaker, who believes a mixed-race orphan with a scarred face should feel lucky to have work.
Winner of the 2026 American Legacy Book Awards’ top prize for historical fiction, the work benefits from its creator’s master’s degree in botany. The expertise informs her “lovingly detailed descriptions of plant and animal life encountered by Asa,” Sandy Scott, co-owner of Hardwick’s Galaxy Bookshop, wrote in a testimonial.
A shocking revelation catapults Asa from the poor farm. Liberated, he makes his own way in the world — until another exposed secret upends everything.
Fruitlands: A Historical Novel
Mark Pendergrast, Brown Fedora Books, 192 pages. $10.
And at times I am subject to temptations of the flesh.
A mad nudist, a depressed former asylum inmate and a young man spiritually anguished over his closeted homosexuality aren’t ideal candidates to found a utopian society. Yet they’re among the colorful and tragicomic characters who populate Fruitlands, a communal farm founded in the remote woods of Massachusetts in 1843. Mark Pendergrast’s novel Fruitlands consists solely of diary entries, letters and articles written by the commune’s inhabitants during its seven-month existence, including those of then-10-year-old Louisa May Alcott, who later wrote Little Women. Some of these materials are real; others, fictionalized.
Pendergrast, a Colchester writer and scholar, has penned 14 books on an array of topics, from histories of mirrors, coffee and Coca-Cola to the myths surrounding repressed memories to a graphic novel about Donald Trump’s 2016 election. Fruitlands’ ascetic inhabitants, who eschew animal products, beasts of burden and goods made by enslaved people, offer a fascinating glimpse into the naïve idealism that fuels intentional communities and the reasons they fail.
The Three Graces of Pearl Street
Elizabeth Wellington Rollins, Atria Books, 400 pages. $30.
“I am Graziella Valentini.”
With those four words, the 96-year-old matriarch of an Italian American family introduces herself to a New York City police officer during a Times Square evacuation. Left unsaid is what the cop will soon figure out: The lady will risk jail time to protect her family.
The Three Graces of Pearl Street, the debut novel from South Pomfret’s Elizabeth Wellington Rollins, to be released on September 1, brings three generations of women named Graziella under one roof. The grandmother, a former nun, swears in Italian and feeds her working-class neighborhood. Her daughter, a respected psychology professor who goes by Grace, is navigating a divorce. Grace’s daughter, Ella, is an anti-capitalist, environment-loving vegan who dropped out of MIT two weeks short of graduating.
Rich, flavorful and as satiating as the abundant spread Graziella serves for the Feast of the Seven Fishes, Rollins’ story is an homage to her own maternal Italian heritage. Tempers flare and food flies during that holiday dinner. What else would one expect when three strong-willed women gather around a table?
This article appears in August 26 • 2026.
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