Precerpt: In with the East Wind: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life (Leaver) - Acton ME
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 ...