BRATTLEBORO-A second edition of Deborah Lee Luskin’s 2010 award-winning novel Into the Wilderness, hailed by the Rutland Herald as “a fiercely intelligent love story,” will be reissued by Sibylline Press.
A celebration of the relaunch will take place Friday, April 10, at ByWay Books & More on Canal Street starting at 5:30 p.m. Luskin will read and sign copies.
Into the Wilderness, set in the mid-1960s, tells the story of Rose Mayer, who has buried 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. She meets Percy Mendell at the Orton Fourth of July book sale, and it’s dislike at first sight.
Percy is 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 and doesn’t know what he’ll do unmoored from work. He meets Rose again at the Marlboro Music Festival, where music becomes their common language.
Set against the backdrop of Vermont’s changing politics and seasons, Into the Wilderness is testament to the endurance of the human heart. The story resonates more than ever in today’s divisive times, Luskin says.
“When I wrote the book, it was a love story. Now, the story of a Democrat and a Republican falling in love seems like fantasy fiction. It’s also a story of how people from away and Vermonters perceive one another — still an issue.”
1964 was the first time in over a century that Vermont supported a non-Republican — Lyndon B. Johnson — for president. It was the beginning of Vermont’s lean toward the left.
Luskin’s book drew much praise in 2010 when it first came out. “Times of transition — personal, political, and in a particular place — are the tectonic plates whose tremors shake loose the story at the heart of Deborah Lee Luskin’s tender and touching first published novel,” wrote White River Press, the publishers of the first edition, in a news release. Seven Days called Into the Wilderness “a perfectly gratifying read.”
Vermont Senate President Pro Tem and author Philip Baruth kvelled, “Luskin’s heroine Rose Mayer is an honest to God miracle. Rarely has a fictional creation come to seem so perfectly real to me, and never [before] have I cheered — out loud — as a character in a novel worked her way through the last stages of grief.”
Like her character Rose Mayer, Luskin is “from away.” She started visiting Newfane in 1965. In 1984, she came for the summer — and never left. Like many Vermonters, Luskin has held a variety of jobs, from office manager to radio commentator. A believer in civic engagement, she has volunteered for both civic and social organizations.
Luskin is also the author of Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress, a memoir published last fall about finding her place in the natural world by following the deer into the untracked woods. Her blog, Living in Place, posts regularly on Substack.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.