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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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
I Call Myself a Huntress
Artemis was a huntress. I come from a family of bargain hunters, not deer hunters. I didn’t become a deer hunter until I turned 60. I’m a sustenance hunter, not a trophy hunter. I hunt deer so I can eat local, wild, organic meat. In the process of learning to hunt, I...
Moving By Muscle
The brain is a muscle. As soon as I started pedaling my bicycle, I heard my inner voice rise, as if moving by muscle had loosened new ideas for the novel I’d shoved aside (again), this time in favor of attending to prepublication tasks for Reviving Artemis: The Making...
Telling Stories
How Long Does It Take to Write a Book? When my dad was ninety-one, he asked me, “How long does it take to write a book?” I told him, “Your whole life.” I wasn’t wrong, but the answer is more nuanced than that. That was ten years ago, when I was embarking on a new...
