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.
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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.
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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
Sitting Down
I have not been writing a poem a week as I tasked myself in Cross Training, nor have I met the goal I set in my Bylines Calendar of writing a chapter a month. If I wanted to grind to a complete halt, I could trip over these “failures,” wallow in chocolate, and stop...
A Writer Cannot Live By Words Alone
When I was working out in the world and raising a family, I was automatically connected to other people. I volunteered at the kids’ school, baked brownies, chaperoned field trips, and helped raise the next generation. My work in a medical office connected me not only...
Solitude versus Loneliness
When I lived alone in Manhattan, a married friend with three sons once said to me, “Enjoy your solitude.” I did. But I was lonely, too. Later, in Vermont, waiting in line to be seated at a diner with my three young children while my husband was working, a different...
