Have to admit it’s been an exciting, though not exactly lucrative, past 12 months since Quaking Dover appeared in print. The 255-page volume is quite different from my earlier publications. It’s history, rather than a novel or poetry, and its tone and outlook pushed my journalism training in new ways. I’ve even come to see this as my major creative nonfiction opus.
Reader reaction has been enthusiastic, and the book’s perspective has challenged the conventional take on New England history and its impact on the rest of America.
Friends Journal magazine called it an “eminently well-argued and documented account,“ while others declared it “a rich feast of a book” or said “It’s like you’re speaking right to me! It’s not like a history at all!” or simply “enjoyed your conversational writing style.”
Unlike my novels, its publication led to a festive book-release party in the Dover Quaker meetinghouse, followed by other events – some of them with unique PowerPoint visuals – in Dover, New Hampshire; Haverhill and Cape Cod, Massachusetts; and Eastport and Pembroke, Maine. Ten in all, and all well received. Didn’t get to do that with the novels. I’ve even had strangers stop me in the street to tell me how much they like my reading. And creating the presentations and accompanying illustrations has been fun in a whole new way for me.
One thing that’s impressed me is the way this has connected with people. It’s about places they live in or have visited, about families and communities they know, about values they share. It’s more concrete than fiction but no less personal.
Overall, it’s sold close to the U.S. average of 200 copies a year. Considering that the book is, at its core, the story of a small congregation in a small city in a small state, I’ll take that as a good start.
Jnana's Red Barn 