Looking for a last-minute gift you can buy online and get to know more about your friends at InDepthNH.org? Now’s the time and here’s some suggestions.
Michael Davidow, who writes our column Radio Free New Hampshire has just published his seventh novel “Interdiction.” Our column Monica Reads by Monica West rates “Interdiction” as “A Must Read New Hampshire Tale.”
Find it on Amazon: “A veteran cop in a small New Hampshire town shoots and kills a college student in a traffic stop gone awry. The ensuing investigation presents a tale of drug dealing, gunplay, and justifiable homicide. The lawyers are in control. The police are waiting and watching. The sole civilian witness to this killing is under indictment herself and silent regarding what she saw. The state’s most powerful politicians line up behind their officer. Only one thing stands between him and exoneration: another cop from another small town who begins to question what happened that night.
His past has called him to his own separate truth.
That revelation is the story of INTERDICTION.
My friend and InDepthNH.org board member Gloria Norris’s book “KooKooLand“
Gloria Norris’s KooKooLand is a memoir written on the edge of a knife blade. Chilling, intensely moving, and darkly funny, it cuts to the heart and soul of a troubled American family, and announces the arrival of a startlingly original voice.
Gloria Norris grew up in the projects of Manchester, New Hampshire with her parents, her sister, Virginia, and her cat, Sylvester. A snapshot might show a happy, young family, but only a dummkopf would buy that.
Nine-year-old Gloria is gutsy and wisecracking. Her father, Jimmy, all dazzle and danger, is often on the far side of the law and makes his own rules—which everyone else better follow. Gloria’s mom, Shirley, tries not to rock the boat, Virginia unwisely defies Jimmy, and Gloria fashions herself into his sidekick—the son he never had.
Jimmy takes Gloria everywhere. Hunting, to the racetrack, to slasher movies, and to his parents’ dingy bar—a hole in the wall with pickled eggs and pickled alkies. But it is at Hank Piasecny’s gun shop that Gloria meets the person who will change her life. While Hank and Jimmy trade good-humored insults, Gloria comes under the spell of Hank’s college-age daughter, Susan. Brilliant, pretty, kind, and ambitious, Susan is everything Gloria longs to be—and can be, provided she dreams big and aces third grade like Susan tells her to.
But, one night, a brutal act changes the course of all their lives. The story that unfolds is a profound portrait of how violence echoes through a family, and through a community. From the tragedy, Gloria finds a way to carve out a future on her own terms and ends up just where she wants to be. Gripping and unforgettable, KooKooLand is a triumph.
DEATH BY RADIO by ROGER WOOD
Death by Radio is a new murder mystery novel written by veteran New Hampshire broadcast and print reporter Roger Wood, InDepthNH.org’s Assistant Publisher emeritus. It follows the death of a popular radio personality in Port Haven, New Hampshire. How he died and by whom is the mystery revealed in the novel. The plot enlists the newfound expertise of a Port Haven detective Joe Emery. He and a former partner from Philadelphia attempt to solve the murder through interviews of staff members of the radio
station and examining highly technical equipment. It is currently an e-book published through
Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other publishers through Draft 2 Digital. Audio and print editions
will also be featured.
Roger Wood is an award winning radio, podcast, newspaper and television journalist, with over
50 years of experience in the media. Roger has spent his entire professional career in New
England. Most recently Roger has served as associate publisher and podcast producer at news
site InDepthNH.org. Email: RogerWoodnews@gmail.com
Website: www.RogerWood.News
Stories from the Rolodex
By Beverly Stoddart
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein may be the names we know. But like those fearless, pioneering reporters from the golden age of journalism, many more men and women were holding up the fourth estate that never made the headlines. In Stories from the Rolodex, you will learn the names of some of the most important figures of journalism who worked in the same era. You will hear their voices as they tell of reporting from a battlefield in Vietnam, witnessing riots in Boston, covering airline crashes, facing discrimination, and finally being fired for telling the truth. These astonishing stories open new doors of understanding the job of the news as they tell, in their own words, the behind-the-scenes workings of people who knew how to get the job done. Available at www.BeverlyStoddart.com or Amazon.com. Beverly Stoddart is a writer, author, and speaker. She is on the Board of Trustees of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project and New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism and working on a novel due out in 2026.
‘The Last Bake Sale’ by Andru Volinsky is more than a book. It’s a mission.
Why do some schools thrive while others struggle just to get by?
At a time when public education is under attack, teachers are being laid off, and funding crises are hitting communities hard, The Last Bake Sale dives into one of the biggest questions in education today: Why is school funding in America so unequal?
Drawing from his decades-long fight as the lead attorney in one of the nation’s landmark school funding cases, Claremont (NH) v. Governor, Andru Volinsky tells this story like no one else can. After explaining how federal law developed to get us here, Andru uses New Hampshire—a state where the poorest communities pay the highest school taxes yet raise the least money—as a lens, Volinsky exposes the harsh realities of an unjust system that prioritizes privilege over fairness.
By Andru Volinsky, While I’ll be selling books and giving talks at independent bookstores, this won’t reach the parts of our state (and other states) most hurt by unfair school funding. What I’d like to do, if you’ll help me, is go to these parts of New Hampshire (and other states) and give away copies of The Last Bake Sale. You can donate to the Book Fund when you buy a book at our website or you can forward a check to my law firm: 160 Law, PLLC (Book Fund), PO Box 1181, Concord, NH 03302. The community non-profit, WNHN, has agreed to act as the fiscal agent for the Book Fund.
Contribute to the Book Fund here.
Below: From the multi-talented Wayne D. King, a former state lawmaker whose columns appear in InDepthNH.org and his substack Anamaki Chronicles. He is also a talented artist/photographer.
Moonlight on the Stonehouse by Wayne D. King
Holiday Specials, https://www.waynedking.com/collections/223370, Discount code – 25% Code SSS25, Discount not applicable on Open-edition art and merch
(Artist’s Statement)
Intervention Enhancing Reality: A Dreamlike Quintessentialism
By Wayne D. King
“The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.” ~ Sir Francis Bacon
For me a straight photograph is rarely enough to capture the essence of what I am seeking to express. Don’t get me wrong. I have a deep appreciation for the pure photograph as art. I think that Dorothea Lange or Ansel Adams or Edward Weston are extraordinary artists and a “simple” color or black and white image can have the impact or beauty of any great work of art. However, for me I generally want to make the art of creating an image a process that goes beyond the simple art form to what I have termed a “dreamlike quintessentialism” designed to spark an emotional response from the viewer. Even now as the words escape my figurative lips they seem contrived, arrogant – an affectation. Yet, for the life of me I can’t find a more apt way to explain either the process or the outcome when I undertake to create an image. Perhaps it is a measure of my own failing as an artist. The fact that I can only rarely capture an image that I find satisfying without my intervention.
Often, when looking to create an impact, I find myself torn between trying to disguise my treachery and flaunting it. Sometimes I choose to disguise it, and sometimes I choose to flaunt it – ignoring perfect straight lines and making them rough and imperfect. It usually works for me; it may not work for you, or you may find it as compelling as I do.
That’s what makes the world an interesting place, and that’s what achieves “dreamlike quintessentialism” in my own universe.
Skunk Cabbage
“Spring’s Dance of Form” is an image that rises to this level. Perhaps that is why it was chosen by the Bauhaus Prairie Gallery for the honor of 1st place in their 2018 Still Life Competition. On the day I photographed the Skunk Cabbage that became “Spring’s Dance,” it was the first really warm day in the shadow of Rattlesnake Ridge in New Hampshire, where I live. Anyone who goes out on that first warm day will find almost nothing growing . . . nothing, that is, except Skunk Cabbage, which has thrust its green leaves into the cool spring air. While its color does indeed provide a stark contrast to the browns, beiges, and muted greens of the landscape, the color is less important than the form.
Contrast this with “Moonlight on the Stone House” (Groton NH). In this image I have captured a beautiful stone house on Hall’s Brook Road in Groton. The image in its purest form included no suggestion of habitation. With the seemingly small intervention of painting a light in the window, the moment changes completely, inviting the viewer inside a welcoming home after a midwinter storm.
What you see here is either the stubborn belief that art derived from the spirit and soul of the artist is still relevant, or the last gasp of those artists as Artifical Intelligence unravels the space between those who put hands and hearts to the task of creating for the pure joy of creating, and those who sit in front of a computer screen and command a bot to produce their vision.