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HIRAM — Maine author Deb Gould will be the guest at the Hiram Historical Society on Saturday, June 8. Gould “writes historical fiction with a keen sense of time and place,” the society said in a news release.
She will talk about her second book “The Eastern: Book Two.” There will be a business meeting at 1 p.m. and the program is at 1:30 p.m., at the Great Ossipee Museum of Hiram Historical Society, 20 Historical Ridge (off Main Street, Route 117).
The event is free and open to the public, and donations are welcome.
Gould said that in the 1990s, she bought an old two-story, side-hall entry farmhouse in East Pittston. The history of the house brought her to Joel Thompson, who bought the land in 1811 and whose descendants owned the property for the next 100 years. She explored some of the neighboring farms, too, and soon had five families –Thompson, Blodgett, Crocker, Call, and Stilphen — who established an agricultural neighborhood on the Eastern River, one that stayed strong through four generations, well into the 20th century. Those houses, all but two gone now to cellar holes and sumac, provided the overall structure for The Eastern novels.
Public records — town meeting reports, cemetery plots, census returns, probate files, commentary and social notes from old Gardiner area newspapers — framed in the details of names, dates, and events. Both fiction and social history, the novels explore the themes of community and reciprocity, of working together for the common good — solid New England concepts we seem to have lost along the way, Gould said.
PHOTO: Great Ossipee Museum, home of Hiram Historical Society. (Hiram Historical Society photo)
