Roger Mitchell’s poems are good company. Well-reasoned yet imaginative, approachable yet deep, the poems in his 2018 book “Reasons Dream” are a pleasure to spend time with. Just as conversation with an old friend over coffee can go from quotidian to cosmic and back, so these poems ...
Saratoga Springs author Jeff Bigelow’s “Emerson’s Adirondack Secret” is an expansive science-fiction novel set mostly in the Adirondacks, from Chazy Lake to Moriah. The novel begins in 2028 in a divided America. The ideological rancor we now see in Washington, D.C., and cable ...
It’s a daunting task to weave reality into fiction, but in Dr. Rada Jones’ debut thriller, “Overdose,” the author does just that. She sets the scene for her protagonist, Dr. Emma Steele, in a location that sounds awfully familiar: a rural lakeside town with an emergency department ...
“The Adirondack Guideboat: Its Origins, Its Builders and Their Boats,” a recently published book (Bauhan Publishing, 2018) by Stephen Sulavik on the topic, may prove to be close to the last word on the subject. The book has multiple uses. Everyone interested in Adirondack history ...
By any measure, Nell Painter was successful. She had a Princeton professorship in her chosen field, history; several acclaimed books; and she was voted into the leadership role in a highly respected organization of historians. As she stepped into retirement, still very active in her ...
Harold Buckley’s “Ten Thousand Places” is a very unusual book. While none of the “ten thousand places” is specifically in the Adirondacks, the writing is artistic and skillful, and will reward area readers. A poetic diary, it includes more than 150 entries, dating from 1948 to ...
“In the Bleak Mid-Winter” is a crime novel that has been out since 2002, but if you haven’t read it, or even if you have, it’s a good one to crack open. I read this story not long after it was first published, and it was tons of fun to read again. Julia Spencer-Fleming has ...
An impressive new compendium of photo work entitled “The Trails of the Adirondacks: Hiking America’s Original Wilderness,” by Carl Heilman, has just become available. It’s accompanied by thoughtful commentary from Neil Burdick and others, and published by Rizzoli International ...
By JERRY McGOVERN Special to the Enterprise Elizabethtown author T.J. Brearton continues to write good mysteries set in upstate New York. His latest, “The Husbands,” is about a serial killer murdering women in central New York, including Liverpool and Auburn. The “separate ...
You may remember in grade school or thereabouts learning that the “haiku” form of poetry was three lines of strict syllable counts of 5, 7, then 5 again. And that’s probably about all you remember (if that!). Haiku is a traditional Japanese form of poetry, dating from about the ...
For this installment, I’ve chosen to review what I deem an unappreciated classic, the autobiography of photographer William Henry Jackson. Entitled “Time Exposure” and published in 1940, it tells the story of a most remarkable yet little known individual from New York’s North ...
Lisa Bellamy’s collection of poems, “The Northway,” is a boisterous, rollicking, often bawdy frolic as she encounters bears, groundhogs, pigeons, and her own self and soul in the world. Desire, memory, fear, addiction and enlightenment are among the big subjects explored in these ...
“Honorable Exit” is another important, and very readable, history from Essex County resident Thurston Clarke, scheduled for publication in April. Clarke begins his examination of the time surrounding the fall of Saigon, marking the end of the war in Vietnam, focusing on a photo, which he ...
Adirondack Life’s “Our Towns” --- Adirondack Life’s “Our Towns” is a must have coffee table book for anyone who loves the Adirondacks. It is a compilation of decades of Our Towns, a featured page in the well knownmagazine. The book contains descriptions of more than 130 ...
“J. S. Wooley: Adirondack Photographer,” edited by Richard Timberlake and Philip Terrie By RICHARD FROST Special to the Enterprise Like many people, I first became immersed in Adirondack history through photography. For me, the portal was Seneca Ray Stoddard. First employed as a ...
“In Praise of Quiet Waters: Finding Solitude and Adventure in the Wild Adirondacks,” By Lorraine M. Duvall --- This book is part memoir of an avid paddler, part informational guide to the history of protecting water and waterways in the Adirondacks, and part guide book to some nice ...
A walk in the woods can be both exercise and metaphor. That was part of the conversation recently among a group of us hiking leisurely in Wilmington. Discussing whether to take the steeper and shorter trail or the gentler, longer one, one of us recited part of Robert Frost’s “The Road ...
Articles and books about White Pine Camp, near Paul Smiths, frequently cite its association with Calvin Coolidge, who used it as his Summer White House in 1926. The complete story is much richer. A new book by Howard Kirschenbaum, “White Pine Camp: The Saga of an Adirondack Great Camp and ...
“Angry Rain” by Maurice Kenny --- My path never crossed that of Maurice Kenny, although certainly I was aware of his extensive writings, knew him to be active in the Native American community, and knew that he was a North Country notable. I did notice that whenever his name came up ...
“Southbound Terror: A Marc LaRose Mystery,” by R. George Clark --- Most of “Southbound Terror” takes place in northern New York and Quebec. But it begins in Salem, Oregon. There a local farmer harvests a crop originating in China: “The seed, originally from the plant ricinus ...