There are all manner of real-world characters who escape to Martha’s Vineyard — to start a new life, to get away from their old one or simply to enjoy the Island. Some are accomplished lawyers, some are alcoholics, some are philanderers, some failed husbands. Jake Dellahunt, Vineyard Lawyer, with an office on the Cape, happens to be all of those.
How does one end up writing a book about a star child? For that matter, what is a star child?
Author Kay Goldstein was wondering the same thing a few years ago when she started writing the first pages of her newly released novel, Star Child, a process which caused her to delve into the depths of human experience.
THE DAY THE EARTH CAVED IN: An American Mining Tragedy. By Joan Quigley. Random House. 2007. Hardcover. 223 pages.
Before he began sinking into the ground, 12-year-old Todd Domboski noticed a wisp of smoke floating from the ground “like a smoldering match buried under damp leaves.”
In Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an abandoned coal mine had been burning beneath the town for 19 years, the book explains, tiny fissures often punched through the topsoil, trailing bands of sulfurous steam.
The Journals of Constant Waterman, Paddling, Poling, and Sailing for the Love of It. By Matthew Goldman, Breakaway Books, Halcottsville, N.Y. 2007, page 336. $14.
Matthew Goldman has sailed into Vineyard waters with his book The Journals of Constant Waterman. Boat enthusiasts and especially wanna-be boat enthusiasts will enjoy the short stories assembled between the cover. His trade is boat repair and maintenance and a lot of other crafts. He lives in Stonington.
LETTER ON THE WIND: A Chanukah Tale. By Sarah Marwil Lamstein. Illustrated by Neil Waldman. Boyds Mills Press, Honesdale, Pa. 2007. 32 pages. $16.95 hardcover.
The disclaimer found at the front of political novels is generally trivial boilerplate. It implies that the novelist, or his publisher at least, is a bit chicken. Coy allusions to real people and events may be made but vaguely and behind the blast wall of imagination.
GOOD LITTLE WIVES. By Abby Drake. HarperCollins. August 2007. 304 pages. $13.95 softcover.
Good Little Wives is a good little chick-lit read. I read it in a day. Granted, there were no distractions because it was one of those rare I-don’t-feel-very-good-I-think-I’ll-stay-in-bed-all-day days. And Good Little Wives, by Abby Drake, was just what I needed.
Like Ireland in the past two hundred years, and Concord in the mid-19th century, the Vineyard is known for incubating writers. Some of them set their stories right here on the Island. The most illuminating to come down the pike in a long time — perhaps the most illuminating ever — is The Mud of the Place, by Susanna J. Sturgis, published by Speed-of-C Productions, $19.99.
Explore Your Dreams by Acting them Out. By John Lipsky. Larson Publications, 208 pages. Softcover, $16.95.
DREAMING TOGETHER: Explore Your Dreams by Acting them Out. By John Lipsky. Larson Publications, 208 pages. Softcover, $16.95.
Prize-winning playwright, director, and professor of drama at Boston University, Jon Lipsky has been pioneering for decades in the field of dream theater. Now he has written an important and delicious new book, Dreaming Together, which sheds abundant light on what happens inside us at night when our eyes are shut.
