True North: Finding the Essence of Aroostook - a book talk with Kathryn Olmstead

Kathryn Olmstead discusses her most recent publication _True North: Finding the Essence of Aroostook_, a collection of essays by Olmstead that appeared in the Bangor Daily News and Echoes magazine-all exploring the author’s experience with the people, places, and culture of Aroostook County. The essays by Olmstead, a former journalism professor at the University of Maine and a co-founder of Echoes who moved to Northern Maine in 1974, introduce readers to rural life and wildlife in an attempt to reveal the universal in the particular-the night sky and ice-out, the people and their cultural roots, and the intimacy with nature in every season. “Aroostook County is not just a place in Northern Maine,” Olmstead writes in her Author’s Note. “It is symbolic of rural places throughout the nation that retain the vanishing qualities of life many people long for in today’s world. The pace is slow, nature is close, the beauty is breathtaking, and the people are authentic.”