MSI Press Blog

  Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver The apple orchard was our front yard—if any place on a farm can rightly be called a "front yard." It was the stretch of land across the dirt driveway from the farmhouse, bordering the winding country road that separated our upper fields, corral-pasture, clothesline, house, and orchard from the lower fields, the swale, and the pine woods beyond. In one far corner of the orchard, under a stand of birch trees, alongside the road, lay the tiny, timeworn Prescott family cemetery. May they rest in peace, whoever they were. The birches partially screened the orchard from the road, adding to its at-times quiet charm and at-other-times privacy for boisterous play. The apple orchard was the hub of our lives. Besides giving us apples, pears, and even cherries—it was, in truth, a mixed orchard though we always called it "the apple orchard...

  Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir, In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver Chapter One: Acton I was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, but my earliest memories belong to East Rochester—a small mill town that felt big to a child on a bike. I spent my early years pedaling down its streets, ducking in and out of the Main Street shops, and playing games on the lawns of the two churches that sat directly across from each other like old, watchful neighbors. Back then, life was as local as it gets. I knew every sidewalk crack and shortcut path, every neighbor’s barky dog, and every familiar bell above a shop door. But as our family grew—eight children in all—my father couldn’t support us on a town lot alone. So we moved across the Salmon Falls River to Acton, Maine, where land was cheap and farms were many. That’s the place I truly think of as my childhood home, the place that shaped my bones and burned the soles of my feet ...