Page 32: Short Takes on Five Vermont Books 

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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 descent of woodpeckers. So this 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 Sweet Pain of Being Alive: A Memoir of Love and Death

Ann Anderson Evans, Austin Macauley Publishers, 181 pages. $13.95.

I danced, flirted, fondled, and teased ... but no roaring urgency came back at me.

Author Ann Anderson Evans' husband, Terry, had a stash of women's clothes hidden under the bed. He repeated a memory of the joy he felt as a child wearing a dress on Halloween. Some of his last words to his wife: "I always wondered what it would be like to be a woman." When Terry died by suicide, Evans finally accepted what she probably knew but never dared say aloud: Terry was transgender.

The Sweet Pain of Being Alive offers a candid account of Evans' marriage, her grief and her lingering guilt that she could have done more to save Terry's life had she recognized his struggle. The memoir is the second installment of a trilogy by the Rutland author, following her 2014 book Daring to Date Again. With unflinching honesty, Evans reflects on whether she would have stayed with Terry had he come out, while also showing deep compassion for the anguish he must have endured while living inauthentically.

Body on Ice: A Vermont Murder Mystery

Alan S. Kessler, Leviathan Books, 105 pages. $14.99.

The lovemaking always quick, what they liked best was afterward when they faced each other and talked.

In winter 1919 in Barre, Vt., a pastor's wife and mother of three is found dead, strangled and naked in a yard not far from the church. It was a true story of murder, sex and corruption that gripped the nation, full of whispers of lurid, secret prostitution and perhaps even a wrongful conviction.

Barre author Alan S. Kessler takes this cold case from more than a century ago and, armed with new evidence, views it through a fictional lens to imagine what might really have happened. Was the man convicted of the murder simply guilty of breaking early 20th-century societal norms? Was the victim a prostitute or a woman having an affair? Not all is as it seems in this tale of small-town secrets and repressed violence. The twists and turns persist as the tale unfolds, giving weight to one of the Green Mountains' first murder mysteries.

Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Fight for America's Energy Future

Jonathan Mingle, Island Press, 352 pages. $30.

The siren song of gas was irresistible.

At the start of Gaslight, Bristol author and journalist Jonathan Mingle waxes poetic on America's fraught history with fossil fuels. It's an eloquent prologue to his chronicle of the six-year fight that began in 2014 between oil giant Dominion Energy and West Virginians who learn, via mail, that the company planned to build the largest pipeline in the region's history through their backyards.

Mingle spins a classically American saga in which citizens from all walks of life band together to confront and ultimately defeat a common foe. It's an intimate portrait of a community that at times reads like a thriller. It's also an unflinching condemnation of America's continued dependence on oil in the face of the worsening climate crisis.

While Mingle writes with an unapologetic point of view, he earns it. He provides centuries of historical context and political nuance to suggest that to beat the Goliath that is the U.S.'s oil addiction, we might look to the legion of Davids in West Virginia.

Falling Through the Night

Gail Marlene Schwartz, Demeter Press, 250 pages. $29.95.

I go online several times, looking at women in Vermont. I go back to Miss Canada.

Audrey Meyerwitz lives an isolated and unsatisfying life in Burlington. Adopted as a child, she craves a partner, children, a support system. Instead, she's an insomniac overwhelmed by a debilitating anxiety disorder and countless failed relationships. She looks for healing in tandem with her best friend, Jessica, a recovering alcoholic who urges Audrey to reach out to her biological parents — and to start dating. Audrey reluctantly takes her advice, beginning the dramatic story that propels Montpelier author Gail Marlene Schwartz's fourth novel, Falling Through the Night.

The stakes are always high. In one memorable episode, Audrey opens up about her anxiety, which abruptly ends a first date. The prospect of long-distance dating between Burlington and Montréal causes a serious rift between Audrey and Jessica, but when the former is smitten with a French Canadian woman, the story takes off. Through intense ups and downs, Schwartz explores queer community, partnerships and found family as Audrey searches for all three amid a life-changing journey across the U.S.-Canada border.

Ten More Things About Us

Nancy Welch, Black Lawrence Press, 60 pages. $9.95

I keep to myself what I suspect: that one day another wire tripped, this one in Mom's heart.

Sometimes the hardest part of watching a loved one age isn't the fear of losing them but witnessing the inexorable erosion of their identity. Reading Ten More Things About Us, a trio of short stories about devotion, loss and soldiering on, it's evident that author Nancy Welch has experienced such pain herself.

In each of the stories by Welch, professor emerita of English at the University of Vermont, a woman confronts the attrition of a man central to her life. In "Pretty," high school teacher Trudy wrestles with the frustration and grief of her husband, Karl's, creeping dementia in the midst of a school tragedy. In "Ten More Things About Us," three sisters return to their childhood home as their mother prepares to sell it and put their father into memory care. In "Havazik," a daughter discovers threads of her father's previously unknown past while his body and mind deteriorate in a rehab bed. This small but poignant book speaks volumes about the often thankless job that women assume as caregivers.