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
Tidying Up: Creating An Uncluttered Home
Almost four years ago, I dissed Marie Kondo’s best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up as an entirely unreasonable approach to creating an uncluttered home. A House Bursting with Stuff At the time, I lamented the Myth of the Empty Nest: My kids had...
Ice Out at Rosefire Farm
Ice Out is a big deal in northern New England, where we’re often four weeks into spring before the first spears of daffodils emerge from the soil, and five weeks or more before we see a yellow bloom. Ice Out means the weather really is shifting from early spring...
Connecting: Eulogy for A Friend
This is the text of the eulogy for my friend Jan Rutherdale I delivered yesterday at Centennial Hall in Juneau, Alaska. Once I overcame the shocking and unwelcome fact of Jan’s death, I was overtaken with a new and a forceful need to be present, to be unambiguously...
