Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress
Finding a Place in the Natural World
Reviving Artemis is the unlikely story of a woman raised in mid-twentieth-century suburbia, then lived in New York City as a young adult, and moved to Vermont in 1984. For more than thirty years, she raised domestic livestock, kept bees, and cultivated fruits and vegetables while teaching literature and telling stories. But when she turned sixty, something shifted. Luskin was overtaken by a primal urge to step out of the garden, off the blazed trails, and into untracked forest by learning to hunt deer.
Available at:
Into the Wilderness
Could there be two people more different?
It’s 1964, and Rose Mayer is recently widowed, a Democrat, and Jewish. When she meets Percy Mendell, a born and bred Vermonter, who has never married and never voted for a Democrat, they clash before a surprising romance springs up, challenging all of the status quos. At age 64, they both must employ their humor, wit and compassion to even consider the other. Set against the backdrop of Vermont’s changing season and voraciously opinionated population, Into the Wilderness is both a love story and a testament to the surprising flexibility of the human heart.
Available at:
Deborah Lee Luskin
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. Her first novel, Into the Wilderness, 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, life-long learners, healthcare workers, and prison inmates. She holds a PhD in English Literature and expected to become an academic, not a deer hunter. She lives in Vermont with her husband, their dog, usually a cat, and a variable number of chickens.
Living In Place
Vermonter By Choice: Murphy Robinson
One of the things Vermonter By Choice Murphy Robinson likes about her adoptive state is how Vermont’s Constitution grants its citizens “liberty in seasonable times, to hunt and fowl on the lands they hold and on other lands not inclosed [sic] . . . under proper...
In My Life
As in the old Beatles’ song, there are places I remember all my life, and last weekend I had a chance to revisit one: Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. It’s where my grandparents lived, where my mother grew up, and not far from where a daughter lives now.It’s also the locus...
Stories and Restorative Justice
The story is at the center of the Restorative Justice process, and as a volunteer for the Brattleboro Restorative Justice Center, I’ve listened to a lot of stories. These are real-life stories, often dramatic, sometimes emotionally wrenching, and at their best,...


