Deborah Lee Luskin in Norwich

Join author Deborah Lee Luskin for a book talk on her new edition novel Into the Wilderness, in conversation with Senator Alison Clarkson (availability permitting.)
In 1964, Rose Mayer buries her second husband and wonders what she’s going to do with the rest of her life. Reluctantly, she visits her son’s summer place in Vermont, where there are neither sidewalks, Democrats nor other Jews. There is, however, the Marlboro Music Festival. It’s there that she meets Percy Mendell, and it’s dislike at first sight. Percy’s a born and bred Vermonter who has never married, never voted for a Democrat, and never left the state. After a satisfying career as the county’s agricultural agent, he’s facing retirement. He’s also struggling with his long-held political beliefs: Barry Goldwater is too extreme for the Vermont GOP. Both Percy and Rose are 64-years old and have given up on love. Set against the backdrop of Vermont’s changing politics and seasons, Into the Wilderness is a testament to the endurance of the human heart.
Deborah Lee Luskin moved from New York City to Vermont in 1984 to write, garden, keep bees, and raise daughters. Luskin has been an editorial columnist, radio commentator, pen-for-hire, and blogger. Into the Wilderness, originally published by White River Press in 2010, won the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Regional Fiction. Luskin has also enjoyed a long career as an educator, teaching writing and literature-based humanities to gifted elementary writers, college students, new adult readers, lifelong learners, healthcare workers, and prison inmates. Since 2016, Luskin has been facilitating the on-going Rosefire Writing Circle, a place to write in community and with support. Engaged in civic life, Luskin practiced restorative justice as a volunteer at the Brattleboro Community Justice Center and served as the elected Town Moderator in Newfane, Vermont. She holds a PhD in English Literature and expected to become an academic, not a homesteader, deer hunter or novelist. Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress, her memoir, tells the story of coming-of-age at sixty and finding her place in the natural world.