Voices in the Hills

This is a book with all the color and rhythm of the seasons of New England. Timeless and yet personal, universal and yet so local you recognize your neighbors, can count the logs in their woodpile, smell the smoke from chimneys on a sunny cold autumn day and savor the taste of last summer's raspberries. Life in the North Country, as folks call this part of New England, is hard. But people here have roots sunk deep into the land and into their small communities. Communities where elected representatives are the folks next door, and campaigns for town offices consist of standing up at town meeting and saying a few words. Villages and farms, main streets and meadows, woods and brooks, churches and barns, are strung together between the Green and White mountains by dirt roads and highways. Brightening predawn skies and lingering sunsets behind the hills, sudden storms, birdsong and animal tracks, sultry summers and frigid winters all inspire reflections on childhood memories, departures and returns, mournings and rejoicings. For a writer like Nessa Flax, the North Country of Vermont and New Hampshire is a storyteller's dream­­--every detail is spun into the yarn of stories celebrating a people and a landscape as she listens to the Voices in the Hills, weaving them into so many small pieces of glittering magic.