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
A Visit From a Reader
Last Friday, I had a visit from a reader who’d been commenting on my posts for several months. I always try to reply to readers’ comments. So Judith and I were soon engaged in what passes for a twenty-first-century epistolary correspondence via cyberspace. Not bad for...
Walking My Way Back to My Desk
I’d been working full-time revising a novel from August twentieth until September twenty-first. Those were four glorious weeks of concentrated work, during which I never had to wonder, What am I going to write today? I worked on the revision morning and afternoon,...
Train Travel on Amtrak’s Vermonter
Last Friday, I boarded Amtrak’s Vermonter and headed to Penn Station. It was a great way for a slow-living homebody to travel. The train isn’t the fastest way to get to New York City, and it’s certainly not the least expensive, but it’s so much nicer than the...


