Yesterday my friend Thomas Rayfiel--a novelist whose work I deeply admire (read In Pinelight! it's so good!), and whose comradeship both heartens and sustains me, sent me a note about Chestnut Ridge. I hope he doesn't mind that I quote him here. His comments make me happy, of course, and very relieved; but even more they make me feel so fortunate to have a reader who zeroed in on a few things I was trying hard to do.

I spent a few nights reading it, unable to sleep, transporting myself to turn-of-the-century Pennsylvania, and forward, and back. I know you have a lot of trouble with the word "regional" but in this case you wear it like a badge of honor. Just a little patch of land on which you perform archeology and memory. I was reminded of one of my favorite books growing up, Richard Howard's Untitled Subjects. What he did for Victorian England you did for a place whizzed by on the Interstate. They should name a Rest Stop after you. I particularly liked [the poem] "Husbands" and, its precursor in a way, "Missionaries." I feel men get short shrift in sympathetic imaginings, these days (I know, I know, there's a lot of inequity to be made up for) and I was moved at your expending the emotional energy to understand aspects of testosterone-based drive and despair.

As the mother of sons, as the reader of Great Books, I've spent most of my life intensely watching men. On good days I tell myself this is a feminist practice. On bad days I wonder what's wrong with me. But to have someone feel grateful for that is a new feeling.

Anyway, thank you, Tom. I'd rather have this note than a book review any day. Which is a good thing since there aren't any book reviews.

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In other news: it looks like I'll be giving an inaugural reading of Chestnut Ridge in Portland, at Longfellow Books, on August 29. I'll keep you posted with more information as things get ironed out. And I could read in your town too--how can we figure that out?