Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. My father’s death certificate is testimony to these things. Kerri Arsenault mill town; mill town pics; press; about; contact; cancer yearbook; words; resources ; events ... Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains is my first book. She has laid out, in elegant prose and harrowing reportage, the price we may all pay, and in this, she has managed to create at once both a cautionary tale and a literary treasure. That … I wonder what kind of festival we’d have for such dangerous shrines as those, or if we’d bother to maintain their perpetual care as lovingly as we shored up Bunyan’s spine. Next . About Kerri Arsenault He blended into the background, as improbable as that seems. Arthur runs a funeral home—Meader & Son—the same one his father and grandfather owned, first as a partnership and then as a wholly owned operation. On the wall of a downstairs guest bedroom, a photo of him skiing at Black Mountain in 1963, heading through a slalom gate. In blue pants, a matching blue watch cap, and a short-sleeve red polo shirt exposing his brawny arms, Bunyan proffers an equally enormous ax that could clear-cut even the Amazon. His prostate removal in 2008 was successful, and, in the year before he died, the word “prostate” was never discussed as a risk factor for lung cancer so why was it on his death certificate now? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. My mother, who laundered so many clothes, didn’t know the shit didn’t wash off. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. But I meet Arthur in his “arrangement office,” where normally a different rush of water occurs: people are breaking into tears. Within fence-line communities like Arsenault’s Mexico, prosperity and affliction are wholly intertwined. Kerri’s book Mill Town is not a family narrative but rather a well-written dialogue along a voyage of personal and professional discovery that should cause all readers to question just what the price of progress is. I’ll never know the answers, or possibly even the right questions to ask about how he or anyone in my town died, especially if the documents were written by people who have their own story to tell. Scientists are trained to be inconclusive and cautious. I’d love to see in the Information Booth some real information—a pamphlet outlining the path of mercury, dioxin, and other toxics the paper mill released and are part of our heritage, too. The third time, I’m going to ask you, where are you working now?” Arthur always showed up. With fiercely  poetic pen, Arsenault  gives us a brilliant personal account of a heart-breaking national tale. MILL TOWN: Reckoning with What Remains. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. My mother was his best caregiver and spent every day trying to get him to live. $27.99. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. Muskie always saw both sides to every argument, the kind of guy who went hunting as a kid but would never shoot anything. Our Bunyan, I learned, was crafted from the mold of the Muffler Man, a giant fiberglass statue who held mufflers in his outstretched hands as an advertisement on US byways in the 1970s. The event will be held on the library lawn (rain date Sunday 9/6). Or vice versa. He’s currently my book publicist and lives in NYC. EXCERPT: “Kerri Arsenault on Life and Death in a Maine Mill Town: What We'll Never Know About Capitalism's Toxic Aftermath” from my book, Mill Town, Literary Hub. But why? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. I was there. She tried to remedy what she could and has moved on. Nobody is coordinating such a thing. “Those are the ones you want to keep happy.” The early afternoon sun dusts his face. After they assembled his improved skeleton, workers wriggled up and out of the neck, one at a time—like the snakes on Medusa’s head come to life in lumberjack disguise—then reattached his head. “Now I’m thirsty,” I say, sarcastically. In telling the story of the town where generations of her family have lived and died, she raises important and timely questions. RECOMMENDATIONS: Five books that changed my ideas about storytelling, Literary Hub. Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Kerri Arsenault's Mill Town is a tender howl about the graveyard of industry. 354 pages. And he is a man of rules, either making them or complying with them. Mill Town: Reckoning With What Remains: Arsenault, Kerri: Amazon.sg: Books. My mother had wanted to sue them for medical malpractice, but she didn’t have definitive proof; no autopsy was ever done. Imagine for a moment the United States eliminated all the toxic chemicals it has created. In honor of the statue’s resurrection, Rumford held a festival featuring a lumberjack breakfast, zip line rides over the waterfalls, a facial hair contest, a flannel shirt dinner dance, and an ax throwing competition. My grandmother smoked.. She didn’t get cancer. Today scientists are certain: asbestos causes harm. Publisher’s Weekly list of “Best Books of 2020”, Barnes & Noble’s list of “Best Social Science Books 2020”, Amazon Editors’ Choice “Best Biographies and Memoirs 2020”, Indie Next Pick, September 2020 (by independent booksellers), Literary Hub’s “September's Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies”, Barnes & Noble’s “Essential Election Reading”, Publishers Weekly’s “Top 10 books for Politics & Current Events”, Mr. Porter’s “Ultimate Guide To Labor Day Weekend 2020”, BuzzFeed’s “Twenty-one books to get excited about this Fall”, Literary Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2020”, The Revelator’s “New Environmental Books to Motivate Action”, Oprah magazine’s “Best Books of Fall 2020”, Newsweek’s “Fall Must-Read Fall Nonfiction”, Goodreads’ “September 2020 top History/Biography Pick”, Goodreads’ “Six Great Books Hitting Shelves This Week” 9/1/20, These bookstores have been generous to me and I hope you will be generous to them: 32 Avenue Books (CO) * Arcadia Books (WI) * Auntie’s (WA) * Barnes & Noble * Belmont Books (MA) * Blue Hill Books (ME) * Bogan Books (ME) * The Bookshop of Beverly Farms (MA) * Brookline Booksmith (MA) * Brown University Bookstore (RI) * Bull Moose (ME) * Center for Fiction (NY) * City Lights (CA) * Devaney, Doak, & Garrett (ME) * Fact & Fiction (MT) * Galaxy Bookshop (VT) * Gibson’s Bookstore (NH) * Greenlight Bookstore (NY) * Gulf of Maine Books (ME) * Harvard Book Store (MA) * Hickory Stick Bookshop (CT) * IndieBound (Online) * Interabang Books (TX) * Left Bank Books (ME) * Longfellow Books (ME) * Market Block Books (NY) * Northshire Bookstore (VT) * Oblong Books (CT) * Oxford Exchange (FL) * Point Reyes Books (CA) * Politics and Prose (DC) * Powell’s (OR) * PRINT: a bookstore (ME) * RJ Julia (CT) * Rocky Mountain Land Library (CO) * Sherman’s (ME) * Twenty Stories (RI) or your favorite local bookstore, Kirkus starred review: 5/27/2020. During my father’s wake, funeral, and burial, we were shown where to stand, where to sit, where to stand and shake everyone’s hand. The model was a blank slate for whatever fairy tale we chose. Small towns from Maine to Minnesota claim Bunyan as their own, yet everyone agrees the boy giant was the hero to all woodsmen. Kerri Arsenault, author, “Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains;” book critic, book editor at Orion magazine, and a contributing editor at The Literary Hub.Arsenault is also a mentor for PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Maine's premier, independent public media resource. By something not exactly chance, it also happens to be the story of my own home town of Gloversville, New York, where another industry (leather tanning) did the same thing. But it ends—as stories of extractive industries often do—with a sorrowful legacy of contaminated waters, illness and loss. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most … A huge Paul Bunyan statue looms over the river where Bunyan-sized logs once floated downstream toward the mill. As Arthur and I talk, the unleafed trees outside magnify the sound of birds hiding in them. At least not yet. The nursing board determined there was no violation of the law and voted to dismiss my mother’s complaint a year after my father died in their care, and they considered the matter closed. She writes urgently about the dire effects the mill’s toxic legacy had on Mexico’s residents and the area’s ecology while evocatively mining the emotional landscape of caretaking for aging parents and rediscovering the roots of her childhood. Chris Matthews, in the Sarasota Herald Tribune in 1966, said of Muskie, he “did not enter politics to have his sentences appear in the newspaper. He worked hard and saw what hard work could build: a businesses, a family, his child’s confidence. I can’t forget it. Ordinary cancers don’t count either. In the meantime, toxins accumulate in our bodies, their presence a placeholder for something that may or may not multiply out of control. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. But the proof is no less elusive. … the force with which your personal narrative drives the story, the pressure that makes so many of your sentences diamond-like-- compact, sharpest-edged, glittering. Tampons, diapers, beef, breast milk, cheese, air: what’s the total intake? Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. “Mill Town is a powerful, blistering, devastating book. Our post–Agent Orange, post–atomic bomb, post-DDT, R&D industrial defoliated landscape proved her claim. Kerri Arsenault narrates her own work and does a fine job sharing personal stories of growing up in the mill town of Mexico, Maine. I never paid much attention to Bunyan despite his size. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working-class town of Mexico, Maine. A River Runs Through It: PW Talks with Kerri Arsenault; Buy this book . MILL TOWN: Reckoning With What Remains. The permutations mirror what it’s like when we look at galaxies in outer space. 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