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My Books

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What There Was Not To Tell

This is a book about war, what war does to anyone it touches, how the loss of one man (the man my mother hoped to marry) affected not only my mother, his family, and her own family, but also my sister and myself as we grew up, aware of the loss of Tom but unable to understand it. Based on more than 2,000 letters left to me after my parents died, What There Was Not To Tell tells the specific story of our family's loss which could be the story of any family who has lost a soldier in war, any war. The book took me 15 years to put together, starting with the massive task of reading through the letters and transcribing them into my computer and ending with an odyssey that took me to Camp Lejeune where my mother trained to be a Marine in an effort to look for Tom, to San Diego to see where she worked during the war and ultimately to Hawaii in search of Tom's grave. The journey to find Tom took me many places, physical and emotional and was ultimately redemptive. The book is 253 pages and includes 16 pages of photographs.

States of Grace: Encounters with Real Yankees

States of Grace is ready to be shipped to you. This is what appears on the back cover of States of Grace:

Here are some of the most delightful, eccentric, honest-to-God Yankees you'll ever meet. New England's most beloved columnist, Edie Clark, paints each of their portraits with the soul of a poet and the warm heart of a friend. Once you read this unforgettable book, you'll feel they're your friends, too.
--Sy Montgomery, author of Birdology and The Good Good Pig

To read Edie Clark’s profiles is to enter into the truest New England. She meets people with her heart open, and, thus, a vast array of characters open theirs. You will not forget the people you meet in these pages. And you will understand why Edie Clark has long been the writer Yankee’s readers feel is a part of their family.
-- Mel Allen, Editor, Yankee magazine

In these pages, meet:
• A woman who’d never made a quilt before but who dreamed a pattern one night and spent the next six months stitching together her dream pattern, the first of many she has created entirely by hand and then has given away, with love.
• A man who took photographs of his hometown, Hartford, Ct., for most of his life using a Brownie reflex camera and creating what amounted to a complete architectural history of his beloved city. The photos are now in the permanent collection at the Hartford Public Library.
• A man who, in 1935, bought a house and five acres of hayfield in central Maine and promised his wife they would someday have “gardens we can walk through.” Both of them are gone now but his extensive gardens have been saved as a national treasure that thousands walk through each summer.
• A Rhode Island man who conquered his retirement boredom by creating an entire miniature village out of discarded aluminum cans. The village (every house is furnished inside) is now in a museum of historic preservation in Newport.
• An eighty-eight-year-old lobsterwoman and shepherdess who kept her sheep on an island and her heart in a lighthouse.
• A man in love with grass
• The oldest newspaper columnist on earth
Of these people, Clark says in her introduction: “(these are) all ostensibly ordinary people but who had one central passion that drove their lives. Eventually, I realized that they were, each of them, living in a state of grace: there was one deep and abiding passion at the center of their lives which endowed them with an elegance and guided them with generosity and good will.”

Each story, many of which were originally published in Yankee magazine, is augmented with an update.

If you would like to order a copy of this book, click on the links on your left or contact Earth Sky + Water at 603-654-7649. Thank you!

The Place He Made

The new edition of The Place He Made is available. The book, originally published in both hardcover and paperback, was declared out of print in 1999 but people have never stopped writing to me in search of this book. Based on this continued interest, I've produced a re-issue of the book and written an afterword which expresses some of what happened as a result of this book. I never expected the kind of response that came when the book was published. Apparently there is a need for books that speak honestly about the experience of losing the battle to cancer as well as the experience of losing a spouse when your lives are still young. It is nearly twenty years since Paul's death yet his special way of being continues to inspire me and encourage me. What has surprised me most is that his special way of being has also inspired others through this book. I never quite realized the extraordinary power of the printed word until The Place He Made was published. The entire experience has taught me a great deal about loss and about grief. Ordering information is on the left of this page.

Saturday Beans and Sunday Suppers: Kitchen Stories from Mary's Farm

Life-saving iced tea, Indian pudding “as it should be,” dandelion wine made in the days when flowers meant peace, roast lamb on an Icelandic farm, baked beans from those who know best, cod cheeks and ale, and a trip to spring that ends with a meal of shad, asparagus and rhubarb pie. Take this journey from the early 1960s all the way to the present and visit all kinds of kitchens on the way through the decades. In Saturday Beans and Sunday Suppers, you’ll discover a delicious collection of thoughts, memories and recipes, all about food, written by one of New England’s most treasured writers. Here, food is not just sustenance but life and spirit and communion all in one. Guaranteed to inspire an appetite, for life and for good food, happily prepared.
224 pages, softcover, $14.95 plus $4 s+h ($18.95 total).

The View from Mary's Farm

A collection of essays entitled The View from Mary's Farm is for sale through this site. The collection includes 56 essays originally published in Yankee magazine, plus a few published for the first time in this collection. 192 pages, softcover. To order your copy of The View from Mary's Farm, click on the links on your left or contact Earth Sky + Water at 603-654-7649. Thank you!

What Readers Have Said About The Place He Made
From The Stacks
By Wicky Sleight, Director of the Kirkwood Public Library
A wonderful, moving book, Elegy for Iris by John Bayley, was on my reading list this
month. It is Bayley's memoir of his wife,
novelist Iris Murdoch, and her battle with Alzheimer's. It reminds me of two of my all-time personal favorites, Philip Roth's Patrimony and Edie Clark's The Place He Made.
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“I have read your book, The Place He Made, and it has touched me deeply, especially as there were amazing parallels between your relationship and my own, your life and my own. Your story has made me even more aware of how strong my relationship is with my husband and how much love we have and how much we have grown in the past decade that we have been together. It is a great book and an even greater story and I wish you luck with your writings to come.”
Sue E.
Christchurch, New Zealand
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“I am currently reading “The Place He Made” and it is a wonderful story. I have been dealing with breast cancer for 6 years and I can really relate to what you both went through. My heart is open to you and know that I am sending love and good thoughts to you. Blessings.”
Irene Jeffries
Irene@loosedog.org
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"Recently a dear friend of mine lent me his copy of "The Place He Made". I started reading is that night before bed and stopped when my eyes wouldn't work anymore. The next day, I dove right in again and didn't stop until I reached the almost end when Paul passes. I stopped there. I couldn't bear for your story to end and I knew it was coming. I wanted to know the rest of the story, what would you do without him every day? What would your life be like from then on? I waited and wondered almost a week before I could bring myself to finish the story. It finally dawned on me that I could let you know how much joy you have brought into my life and for how long I've awaited your stories each month. I keep my subscription to Yankee mostly for your column. I can't wait to read your next two books! If I were a publisher, I would certainly take them on!
Laura Robertson
Greenwich, New York
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"I am writing to tell you how touched I was while reading your beautiful book, THE PLACE HE MADE. It was recommended to me by a member of MPIP (Melanoma Patient Information Page) message board, so I ordered it online. Once I began reading it, I was hard pressed to put it down. I finished reading it yesterday. I have Stage III Melanoma, diagnosed last summer and am going through treatment at this time. . . . Now that I've tasted of your writing and found I so much enjoy your writing style, I long to read everything of your creation that I can put my hands on. I will begin immediately."
Jeanne Miller
Wimberley TX
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"I just finished "The Place He Made" and found your website. I enjoyed this book so very much. I am not an everyday reader of books, very seldom do I actually sit down and read a book. I won your book on E-Bay when searching for melanoma related things. See, I am a Stage 3 Melanoma patient. Diagnosed 8 weeks after the delivery of my second child. I am in a clinical trial for treatment. I will inform all my melanom friends that a good read I found. Thank you for writing this story and using the word melanoma."
Stephanie Lynde
crabbieone@comecast.net
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"Thank you for such a beautiful and touching story of your husband Paul. What a special man he was."
Sandrine Gabriel
San Diego CA



Monadnock Tales

The complete work entitled Monadnock Tales is the result of a collaboration between composer Larry Siegel and writer Edie Clark. Together they created a work that arises from and reflects a love of the mountain and the Monadnock Region. Edie Clark’s words start and end with the mountain itself, a “great gray granite blade.” Along the way they tell of wolves and fires, farmers and pilgrims – the many who have written, painted, sung, danced, and climbed the mountain.

The work’s debut performance was performed in May of 2002 by the Keene Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Eric Stumacher and narrated by Lewis Feldstein. A second, encore performance was performed in March of 2003. Several performances have been done more recently in smaller venues. The poems in this book are the complete, unabridged words of this work, a celebration of Mt. Monadnock, the place known to Ralph Waldo Emerson as “Cheshire’s haughty hill” and to countless others as home. We would love to talk with you about a performance in your area.

Now available: A CD of the premier performance of this innovative work, performed by the Keene Chamber Orchestra. The CD is available for $16.