Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains

by Kerri Arsenault

A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.”

Mill Town is an personal investigation, where Arsenault sifts through historical archives and scientific reports, talks to family and neighbors, and examines her own childhood to illuminate the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease. Mill Town is a moral wake-up call that asks, Whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Environment, Science, Audiobook, Sociology

368 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2020

About the author

I am co-director of of The Environmental Storytelling Studio at Brown University (TESS), contributing editor at Orion magazine, book critic, and author of Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. I am the Democracy Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, a research fellow at the Science History Institute, and a guest lecturer at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich for winter 2022-2023.

Mill Town won the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Maine Literary Award for nonfiction. Mill Town was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre; the Eric Zencey Prize in Ecological Economics; the New England Society Book Awards; the New England Independent Booksellers Association nonfiction prize; and the Connecticut Book Awards. Mill Town was also long-listed for the Chautauqua Prize and was a New York Times Editors’ Pick. My writing has been published in the Boston Globe, The Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, Freeman’s, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Reviews

[Nicole Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has more layers than an onion. Layers that telescope from what happens inside one girl's growing up journey, inside her family, inside one city, one region, and bigger into our culture and our country and corporate personhood and the consequences of that to our lives and the environment that sustains them.

Overall this book contains not only a very thick, nostalgic retrospective, but also a condemnation of our collective complacency toward being taken advantage of by the all-too-often faceless powers that be.

It's a chilling clarity that this book provides: we're already so committed to giving ourselves away to corporations and the capitalism engine in exchange for our usually paltry paychecks, that we no longer have energy left to defend the rights of others even more vulnerable than ourselves. Thereby we all lose; we are all plundered for our deliverables.

At one point the author compares a former lunatic asylum at which patients were disposed of in unmarked graves now forgotten to history (which now houses the Maine Department of Environmental Protection) to her hometown, saying "We've a long history of stockpiling the unwanted in such institutions or landscapes of no relevance or concern: prisons, homeless camps, Section 9 housing, or small industrial towns." Provocative! And timely. The preschool-to-prison pipeline is healthy and well in this nation, with healthy side-quests of opioids, alcohol, or overwork also on standby for the less advantaged.

Some of the consequences of this complacency are playing out the long game over generations. Industrial pollution, in particular, is insidious in its creeping inevitability. Toxins continue to accrue. No one is appointed with the power to advocate for those who live in affected regions. The folks who believe they are doing good, solid work, staying out of trouble, graduating their kids from high school and retiring from honest jobs, are meanwhile taking on unsustainable levels of the stuff manifesting in physical ailments, many deadly. Many of these people are clinging to any perceived advantage. Many of them clung to a desperate hope that led them to vote Trump in 2016, and are now saddled with all the associated connotations of that.

Regarding this tainted cloud of malign industrial corporate interests raining down on small towns across America, the author says, "Updates to those less glamorous crimes are stalled in agencies across the world, working their way slowly to the top of the inbox, just as slowly as toxics work their way up our food chain from groundwater, to sheep, to Parmesan cheese. The news is that it's not news because such people and landscapes drift in the peripheries where its hard to see or where we don't bother to look, in isolated places of no tenable or fiscal concern. Such quiet tragedies only flicker in the headlines, which makes their consequences hard to pin down and difficult to voice. And voice is the very thing absented, invisible like the people themselves. "

The human mind can't grasp the scale of the corruption and pollution our greed and capitalist gods have wrought. The consequences are made human scale here -- a father, a son, spaghetti dinner benefits to pay for cancer treatment.

Here's the thing. I grew up in a mill town. It was no big deal to drive down to Lakeside and smell "the paper mill smell". We all knew what it was, and we all respected it as an important part of our town's character. "The Heights" used to be a true uptown, a thriving place. Everything's crumbling now, and there are attempts to rebuild with hipsterish businesses like microbreweries. The paper mill's gone, but...

As of January 2003 in Muskegon County, there were 55 active areas designated as Act 451 Part 201 sites. Of these sites, 8 are on the Superfund or National Priority List.

I have no idea what this means to my family. I don't have the bandwidth to do the research and door-knocking that Kerri Arsenault did.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FINALIST!! The National Book Critics' Circle's annual John Leonard Prize for a first book's winner will be announced on 25 March 21.

MILL TOWN gets a spot on this terrific Best-of-2020 list from BuzzFeed! Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my DRC.

The 2020 book I couldn't review because I always end up screaming at my computer and kicking my laundry bag...it is that good, that real, that intense and necessary a read. Using her own hometown, and her entire youth there, as a lens to expose and excoriate corporate chicanery, Author Arsenault is taking no prisoners. Like her predecessors in exposé-dom Katherine Boo (Behind the Beautiful Forevers) and Rachel Carson (Silent Spring), she dug deep, interviewed widely, and concluded with a shout of outrage you really owe it to yourself to experience.

[Kelly Parker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer: Didn’t finish.
I thought this book about the ravaged mill town where the author grew up would be like an Erin Brockovich story - investigating the havoc the paper mills have been inflicting on the small town nicknamed Cancer Valley - but it wasn’t. At least, not enough of it.
Parts of the book WERE good; pretty much anything focused on how the paper mills were affecting the people of the town. The problem was the author continually going off on these long tangents and history lessons about her family tree, travel experiences, town founders, etc. It got to where I was just turning pages until whatever lesson she was on was over so I could get back to reading what I actually signed up for.
At around 40%, when she in the middle of another lecture about someone else I didn’t care about, I reminded myself that I wasn’t getting paid to finish this book and I didn’t have to keep reading it.
I promptly closed it down, started another book and read happily ever after.
Thanks to #netgalley and #stmartinspress for this ARC of #milltown in exchange for an honest opinion.

[Maj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any book that starts with a statement made in 1857 that is on point with the world of today peaks my interest. In this case, Kerri opens her book with a quote Frederick Douglass made in a speech 3 Aug 1857 - "find out just what a people will submit to, and you found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

But this is not a book about populace-fueled socio-political unrest, it is a book about something that runs parallel. It is a book about an area whose "existence is shaped by natural forces and human intervention, capitalism and its consequences, economic crimes without punishment . . . and ravaged human beings who thought such neglect didn't do them any harm."

Kerri points to "a neo-feudalistic future, the foreground to the background of burdens almost too much for our bodies . . . to bear." She warns "We are all complicit to different degrees, even in those things we omitted, like the silence we failed to break - the things we couldn't bear to say. This existence is only a glimpse of what's to come." And Kerri asks, "What would the world be like if we all changed our demands?"

In many ways, this narrative spoke to me on a personal level. Having been a claimant on the Stringfellow Acid Pits, much of the book seemed oddly familiar. History repeating itself. But this was more than a narrative that recycles stories of the past in the words of today's generations. This volume instead highlights the cancer that has grown inside us on a national level, as a nation. A cancer of silence, of laissez-faire attitudes, and practice of looking the other way when we ourselves are not directly impacted. Kerri places blame front and center not only on the 'rich', the companies, but on the people who have turned a blind eye. Those of us that in our silence and / or unwillingness to engage become complicit. As Kerri shows, we are ALL impacted by turning a blind eye. Sooner or later the piper comes to us all. Sooner or later, we have to answer for not demanding a change to the way things have always been done.

This book is a must read!

[Stefani Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

***I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Macmillan Audio and Netgalley!***

I’m not entirely sure where this book went wrong for me. Maybe I am not the right audience for it. Perhaps I should have read it versus listened to it. Perhaps I had the wrong expectations. I can’t say for sure but it was just boring.

The author of the book did the audiobook and that was the wrong choice. The entire book is read in deadpan. There is absolutely no life in it, no passion, no excitement. I was bored to tears listening to it and struggled to focus on what was being said.

The book had some interesting pieces to it. And I could tell that the author has a lot of strong feelings about how the story of her hometown relates to a larger picture of environmental irresponsibility, lack of corporate accountability and the deceit of the general public. Unfortunately that is way too large of a scope for a single book. So while the author makes some interesting points about these topics there is no depth or exploration of the idea.

There are also a LOT of tangents in this book. All of the material focusing on the town and the struggles and effects of the paper mill were really riveting. But there were also whole chapters on the town’s founding, her own family tree, her travel experiences and lots of other things. It detracted from the main story. Frankly, at times it self like a memoir of her family and that just wasn’t something I found interesting or compelling.

I got to about halfway through the audiobook before I couldn’t stand it any longer and stopped. I am sure this story will find its audience but I was not it.

Reviewed for: Written Among the Stars

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I read the description of this book, I felt drawn to it. I grew up in a remote, rural area where generations worked in the same factories. We told time by the whistle calling people to work. As I read I found I had even more in common with this author- French Canadian ancestry, we both left and have made our lives away from our hometowns, even my childhood priest was born on December 25, just as hers was. As towns close to where I grew up have fought public battles with companies over PFOA, I have wondered if the places that provided our livelihoods were also poisoning us. I wanted to like this book. But I couldn't. I was ready to give up on it before I finished chapter 1. The author likes to use a lot of words, so many adjectives and descriptions in one sentence that you can't even get an image of the scene. It felt as if the author was trying to flaunt her MFA by using a vocabulary that doesn't fit the narrative. She talks about her hometown, her parents, her grandparents with a callousness that provides the reader with no connection to these people. This book is poorly organized as the author jumps from exploring genealogy to memoir to environmental issues. There are random black and white images throughout the book with no caption, no explanation. I skimmed most of the book and finally gave up around page 250. My time is too precious to continue reading bad books.

[Michael Asen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book about the Maine you do not see when visiting Vacationland. Part memoir about growing up in a mill town and part peeling back the onion on carcinogenic elements of living in such a place. I probably live 60 miles from Mexico Maine and while the details of what has gone up there do not surprise me , it embarrasses me that I haven't spent more time thinking about the plight of these workers and their families. This can be an industrial town in any state but is more compelling because Maine prides itself on clean water and clean air. This is well researched but also is a great look at the authors own search to reclaim her Maine identity. You do not need to be a "Mainiac" to read this book but it should be required reading for anyone living in the Pine Tree State.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a memoir and an investigation of the paper mill industry in Maine. The author, Kerri Arsenault, grew up in Rumford, Maine. Her family are from French Canadian stock, and call themselves Acadians. These are people who lived in the Maritime Provinces in Eastern Canada. In the later part of the 18th century, Acadians were expelled. Many of the Cajuns of Louisiana are descended from these people. Some went to Maine and for three centuries, French Canadians continued to move to Maine. Arsenault’s father and grandfather worked in the mill, and both died of respiratory cancers. Arsenault’s mother sent her children to go to college. The author married a man from Massachusetts, something that distanced her from the place where she grew up.

Mill Town is about paper factories in Maine, specifically Rumford and Mexico, Maine. In the late 20th century, the paper mills started to close. The Rumford plant produced high grade paper, and one of their largest contracts was with National Geographic magazine. Outsourcing of paper production and printing, the growing use of digital media, and environmental regulations were some of the factors that led to the shrinking of paper production. A local said that when a mill worker lost their job, they lost their identity.

Arsenault sets out to investigate the high incidence of cancer in her town. She found a lot of obfuscation of the data collected by the state, and other bodies. If a mill worker has been a smoker, ever, the diagnosis was cancer due to smoking. Many family members of millworkers developed cancer and other illnesses. Wives washed their husbands' asbestos covered work clothes, and exposure led to them developing respiratory illnesses. Children became ill, and the number of children needed special education services was among the highest in the state. Arsenault discovered the numerous ways in which the paper mills covered up the health statistics, and hid the vast amount of chemicals they were dumping in the local river. She found that there were a number of activists in various parts of the state who were investigating aspects of environmental degradation in their areas. Arsenault was buoyed and supported by their information and efforts.

Maine is marketed as a tourist paradise. That is an illusion created to bring in needed dollars to the economy. But behind this façade, this is a state with a majority of the population struggling to get by. After the paper industry was effectively shut down, a new crop of businesses came in buying up water rights. The largest is the Swiss multinational company, Nestle. In 1992, Nestle bought Poland Spring water. This water is no longer from Poland Spring. A lot of the water rights Nestle bought up are in the towns where the paper mills have closed. I wondered how the contamination of this water had been cleaned up. I could go off on a tangent on the topic of bottled water, but I will limit my comments. However, I have wondered for a long time how all of bottled spring water could possibly be coming from fresh water springs. In the past few years, spring water has been replaced by tap water which many of the major bottled beverage brands market. While the towns were paid for these water rights, this was far less than the value extracted by Nestle.

This is a book about identity – French Canadian, Acadian, native of Maine, American, Catholic, working class and more. It is a detailed history of the environmental abuses committed by the paper industry. We see that there was a time when the factory workers took pride in their jobs, and managed to earn enough to live modestly but provide for their families. The disappearance of decent, although now we know, deadly jobs for men and women with high school educations has devastated the economy of Maine.

I read this book because I have long been fascinated with the mill towns of New England. I am a New Englander, now living in Maryland. My Irish great grandfather and his parents, my great-great grandparents emigrated from Tipperary around 1870. I learned a few years ago that the part of Tipperary they came from was in the center of the area engulfed in Land Wars between rebellious farmers, members of the Land League, and British authorities. They moved to New Hartford, Connecticut, were members of the Immaculate Conception parish, and buried in the church cemetery. New Hartford at the time was a factory town, and although I don’t know for sure, it is very possible members of the family worked in local factories.

This is an important book about the vast changes in work in America, corporate greed, and environmental destruction. Highly recommended.

[Jessica Haider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mill Town is new memoir that is a reflection on family, small town life, the impact industry has on the environment and small towns and more. This is a thoughtful book that wanders seamlessly from personal anecdotes to scientific research.

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the small working class town of Mexico, Maine where generations of families have worked at the local paper mills. As an adult, Arsenault realizes what an impact the paper mills have had on the town by releasing toxins into the environment. A seemingly large number of the town's residents, including Arsenault's own family members are diagnosed with cancer over the years, leading some to wonder if there is a connection to the paper mill.

This was a fascinating read that delved into some topics that I already had some knowledge about but also taught me some new information. Arsenault effortlessly covered multiple topics and angles and kept it engaging the entire time. She delves into the chemicals known to be released by the factory and their known impacts but also looks into the history of the area and the Acadian people. We learn about the divide between polluted Maine waterways and Maine's image as "Vacationland". I formerly worked at an environmental software company that specialized in an app to track water quality and potential threats to source water so this book definitely piqued my interest, but will also be a good read for anyone interested in environmental non-fiction or memoirs.

I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by the author and she did a good job with it. I will definitely look into checking out more of her writing.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio for the audio book in exchange for an honest review!

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosh, I had high expectations for this book because 1) I love memoirs, 2) I've read some very positive reviews of this book and 3) I'm pro-environment. I was very much looking forward to Kerri Arsenault revealing the lies and secrecy in our big corporations and governmental agencies. That said, this book just fell flat for me.

In particular, I found that there were too many personal tangents (e.g., the author's trip to France) that took away from the main storyline of exposing the paper mill. Yes, this is a memoir, but I much preferred the research and investigative components to her packing up her house and moving 40+ times.

I found the length to be much too long to hold my interest. I kept wanting Kerri to get back to telling the real-world stories of what's happening to the people (and families) affected by the poisoned water and air.

Usually I find that a memoir is at its best when the author reads his or her story for the audio book, but in this case, Kerry's voice (inflection, tone, approachability) didn't work for me.

[Debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Audible purchase narrated by the author. Unfortunately.

I actually have spent time smelling Rumford. A kraft pulp mill may have the smell of money, but boy howdy!

That personal connection is why I wanted to read this odd but compelling book.
It would have been better with more focus. Did she intend to write a memoir, an environmental screed, an elegy to small company towns?

[Erin Wyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't remember how I became aware of this book, but I won't soon forget reading this book. The subject of mills and mill towns, cancer and family are not a light subject, but the language of the author sucked me right in. I am calling it "a memoir of a town".

[Bethany Todd · Rating 1 out of 5]

didn’t finish the last bit bc this is quite possibly the worst book in the history of mankind. bored out of my soul but i had to read it for school so not read if you don’t want to take years off your life

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a born New Englander from New Hampshire and Massachusetts and I grew up and have lived old milltowns myself. Whilst they are quaint and have now been recycled into housing, schools and art galleries they are a reminder of times gone by and of a damn hard life. The paper mills are mainly in Northern New England and as dangerous as the Monsanto company in their own right. The town of Mexico Maine and I bet you can go from one end to the other with your eyes closed. This book is about the author Keri Arsenault and how they slowly became ill from the papermill in their town of Mexico Maine. A whopper of a heartbreaking true story with a dickensenian feel. And it reminded me also of the coalines. A great new voice has risen from the paper ashes like a phoenix! Loved it and have sincere admiration for the people of "down east" Maine as the natives call it. 5 stars and recommending it to my bookstore clientele, friends and family.

[Jerry Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounded up to 3 for effort.

I'd heard a lot about this book and went so far as to buy it rather than wait for the library.
High Expectations = disappointment.

The author couldn't seem to figure out what the book was supposed to be.
Is it an expose on unsafe working (and living near) conditions at a paper mill?
Is it about Maine's ecological problems?
An economics book?
Acadian migration?
It seemed to be all of these wrapped loosely in a memoir.

Her writing was far too complex and showy in the story sections but in the sections where she was writing about statistics it was clear and straightforward.
Minor issue but she also had random photos sprinkled throughout the book with no caption or context almost as an afterthought.
This book desperately needed an editor.
Pass

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a free electronic copy of this excellent personal history from Netgalley, Kerri Arsenault, and St. Martin's Press on August 13, 2020. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this history of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. Kerry Arsenault writes a compelling, heartfelt personal history of generations of her family and friends that grew up in a northern Maine paper mill town.

Maine's infamous Cancer Valley includes the towns of Rumford and Mexico, Maine where the single employers were major producers of paper and paper products. Unfortunately, the valley involved earned its nickname. Cancer diagnoses, treatments, and deaths are many times that of 'normal' residential areas - communities not reliant on a single employer big business to survive. Paper mills were bad, as were chemical plants, mining concerns, even cloth manufacturing.

Arsenault shares with us her family history as it evolves around the side-effects of life surrounded by the constant side-effects of giants in the paper business in a world that had no thought or care for the future of the family or even the earth. The world was much smaller and more remote back in the day, and few if any towns were concerned with unchecked pollution of air and water and its effects on employees and communities. This is a nightmare that is still happening in some areas. When is the cost of employment more important than that of health? How much must we sacrifice to bring home that paycheck? Ms. Arsenault shows us where we must in the future draw the line. If only we could see it through all the Corporate DoubleSpeak and BS...
pub date September 1, 2020
received August 13, 2020
St. Martin's Press
Reviewed on Goodreads and Netgalley on August 31, 2020. Reviewed on September 1, 2020, at AmazonSmile, Barnes&Noble, BookBub, Kobo, and GooglePlay.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost didn’t read this book. I prefer fiction, and the nonfiction I read is usually bookended by fiction, and I’d just read an older cultural analysis from Elizabeth Wurtzel (RIP) that had made me want to escape back into my fiction. All I knew was that this book was about Mexico, Maine, and it was due back at the library in ten days, so...it was time to read it. I picked it up as much out of a sense of obligation as anything. I would give it a try, but my expectations were low.

Right away, the writing and the tone are comfortable, familiar. The tour through Mexico/Rumford is so rooted in place. Then by page nine the author reveals that she left small town Maine to attend Beloit College... just like me. Okay, I’m in.

This book is everything you expect it will be, describing the environmental, financial, spiritual devastation this town endures all for corporate greed. But through personal narrative as much as reporting, the author weaves stories of Acadian genealogy, the corruption of Nestlé and Poland Spring, the rise of local hero Edmund Muskie, and so much more. Her portraits of town characters are tender, loving, and she has some credibility with her subjects (I mean everyone loves her parents) even if she’s been gone for so long that’s she basically “from away.” These are her people. These are our people.

I cannot recommend this book enough: a town’s history, a people, the explicit deceit and exploitation from corporate America, it’s all there. Kerri Arsenault’s work is a must read.

[Kim Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fascinating book!! Part history lesson, part Genealogy, part environmental study, part family, and part small town. The authors research in how the paper mill in her small town, affected not just the people that worked there but the river and the fish in it, the ash and how it coated everything was simply amazing! This book was mostly a memoir but I would also say it was an study on how greed, corruption, and the need for control can destroy a town. So many layers to this book and each one was told with such understanding and love. You just knew the author cared about her town and wanted to help. The environmental parts in this book are eye opening, and that is thanks to this authors exceptional research!

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin's Press and Kerri Arsenault for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. Over the past few years, I have realized that narrative nonfiction is one of my favorite genres to read. I tend to have a novel and a narrative story going at the same time and I read between them depending on my mood. I was interested to read this along with The Book Cougars podcast and I am looking forward to hearing the author speak about her work. This is a memoir about growing up in Mexico, Maine which is a company town for the paper mill. The mill had been built in the early 1900s and the author's father and grandfather as well as numerous friends worked there. The relationship between the town and mill is complicated, as it became more obvious how dangerous it was to work in the mill. Industrial accidents happen (and OSHA has forced safety improvements in the mechanical aspects of the work), but the hidden dangers of the chemicals used and created were not fully appreciated until it was too late for many of the workers. Kerri Arsenault seemed to set out to try and draw the straight line between working in the mill and cancer causation as well as other long term chronic illnesses. Despite amassing a huge quantity of documents, it is a frustrating finish line to cross.
This book covers a lot of aspects of living in blue collar Maine which is not the Vacationland seen in advertising. The evolution of the mill and paper making mirrors so much of what is happening in the United States in general, as the country has shifted from a farming/manufacturing economy to an information/data driven one. This shift has left many small towns and their inhabitants behind and Arsenault pleads their case beautifully. Broad in scope, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains is an important book, not only in its specificity of Arsenault's life and the State of Mine, but its overall applicability to so many in the entire country.

[Dana Clinton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review: Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains (Kerri Arsenault) This is one of the two books my local library is discussing in our book group for August, both from the ReadME list for this year. Although I can admire the enormous time the author put in to the creation of this book, it leaves me with very mixed feelings. I have only been in Maine 30 years or so, so I am not a native Mainer, as much as I love where I ended up and have no desire to leave. I think Kerri Arsenault couldn't really decide what this book was, in the final version. I thought it was going to be a coherent presentation of life in a small Maine town totally dependent on a paper mill... and much of it was, but it rambles and was tough to stick with. I appreciate also that in fact there is no definitive answer to her seeming central question: is the mill, its pollution and toxic dumping and lax practices in spite of the union, the cause of the high cancer deaths of the population of Mexico, Maine and nearby Rumford? We are given a lot of information and definitely are left with the feeling that the answer is yes, but then, cover ups and lack of responsibility are the hallmarks of runaway capitalism. But here are the problems: The book is somewhat an autobiography, but that intrudes all over the place, sometimes tied to the story of the mill town, but sometimes not. Bits and pieces of other history are presented, are tantalizing (for example, the history of the Acadians who were driven brutally from their Canadian homesteads), tied to the book's main vision but only loosely. The death of Kerri's father, of cancer when he was 80, haunts the book as well driving her search for answers about the mill and its practices. There are multiple forays into explaining why so many young people (including the author) chose to leave, and the confusion that creates when they return. There are many many places where she throws in "sociological" or "philosophical" or "political" comments which all too often sound like warmed up sound bites and so fall flat. And it really irritated me that she seemed to insert obscure vocabulary in what is neither a literary nor a polished narrative... and I am very keen on beautiful language and love vocabulary, but I had to look up many words, at least one of which was not even in my dictionary... and this gratuitous fancy vocabulary was off-putting. In some cases, I don't think her use of it was even accurate for the meaning of the word. She needed a better editor. In short, this feels more like a series of good magazine articles about the meaningful things in her life that just didn't flow together. There are so many good points which could have been developed in a tighter more impressive fashion. I suspect we will have a great discussion of issues brought up in the book, which is fine. I regret only the lack of consistent quality in the writing.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Riveting at times, with many twists and turns from memoir, to environmental exposé, and even to history, this book has a bit of everything. Arsenault grew up in Mexico, Maine, a town dominated by a paper mill that is the main town employer, and which has been responsible for decades of pollution and environmental degradation that has likely contributed to the high rate of cancer in the area. Arsenault set out, I think, to expose the issues surrounding the plant and its lack of care for its employees, but this book goes well beyond that to explore her feelings of being "from" but no longer "of" Mexico, Maine, because she left. The environmental issues that she presents are shocking, and should be of concern to all of us, because these issues are common well beyond this small town in Maine.

I liked this book, but didn't love it, but I recommend it for its important environmental message.

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would actually give this a 3.5. I listened to it on audio and, although it is an interesting story, it felt like it dragged a bit and could have used some editing to remove some of the side trails where she lingered. It is the story of the town in Maine where Arsenaught grew up, which contained the paper mill that supported her family and the community. The environmental hazards in the ground water, the soil, and the air were extensive. The cancer rates in the community were shockingly high. The author does a deep dive on all sides of the issues involved, including the colliding economic interests. This book would be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about environmental damage of large scale manufacturing.

[Barred Owl Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

A love letter to home and cry for change. What happens when the home town main employer has also been the one poisoning its employees and destroying the environment for future generations in this struggling town?

[Michelle Morrill]

Incredibly well researched and written. More of an extensive investigative news article with heavy historic information. Arsenault also blends in her own story with a focus on her father. Very interesting.

[gillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

i hate to give this book less than 4 stars b/c of the sheer amount of time, energy, & extensive research arsenault put into her exploration of the way industry/capitalism affected her hometown—-but at the same time i also wish she was more clear w/ her intention in writing this book: is it a memoir or is it an environmental call-to-action? b/c the larger message(s) seems to get lost within all the personal details and off-topic anecdotes until the very end. i think that this book would be better if it was made up of vignettes of different ppl who were affected, tied into her research

3.5 stars not 3 btw but goodreads doesnt allow u to do that 🙄 def a worthwhile read

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

MEmoir/ History / Political Treatise... all in one package. I'll be honest, I picked up this book thinking it would be a bit closer to my own history of being in and around a mill town. In my case, the actual mill town was, by my time - roughly when Arsenault was graduating HS - , just a neighborhood of a larger County seat town it was founded just outside of around the same time as the mill Arsenault writes about. I know what it is like to live in such an area and have the mill be such an important aspect of your life, and I was expecting a bit more of an examination of that side of life. Which is NOT what we get here. Instead, we get much more of the specific familial and mill history of Arsenault and this particular mill and its alleged past and current environmental misdeeds. We even get a screed against Nestle along the way, and even a few notes of misandrist feminism. Also quite a bit of heaping of anti-capitalist diatribe, all tied up in Arsenault's own complicated emotions of being someone who cares about her home town, but who it was never enough for. (The exact dichotomy I was hoping would have been explored directly far more than it actually was, fwiw, as that is exactly what I struggle with myself.) Overall, your mileage may vary on this book depending on just how ardent you are in your own political beliefs and just how much they coincide with Arsenault's own, but there was nothing here to really hang a reason on for detracting from the star level of the review, and hence it gets the full 5* even as I disagreed with so much of it and was so heavily disappointed that it didn't go the direction I had hoped. Recommended.

[Gwen Haaland · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book, at times uncomfortable to hear (audiobook version.) At other times, the authors metaphors and powerful lyrical prose were breathtaking. Part environmental expose, part memoir, part coming of age in a small town surrounded by families struggling to survive and then growing up, moving away and seeing it all from a different perspective. This is a book that forces you to think about environmental ethics vs. the uncaring capitalistic greed of human society.
The authors amazing writing talent, research, bravery in telling her story, tenacity and loyalty to family and home shine through.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some aspects of this book - 2, others - 4.

I understand that the author acknowledges that definitive answers are slippery eels, however, I felt like the book couldn’t decide what it wanted to be when it grew up. And then…I definitely learned a bunch, even though it was horribly depressing.

I almost felt like it was two books in one, (her personal family exploration tied to nostalgia vs. an environmental expose) with neither quite hitting the mark.

[Sherree Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kerri did a beautiful job tying in her concerns for our western Maine communities, small bits of memoir and search for her heritage. Such a vivid picture of growing up in the Mexico and Rumford area. Her painstaking research into the chemicals impacting the health of our environment and vitality. I never considered my own issues with infertility could be tied to this, but it sheds a new light on my struggle.

Kerri’s research shines a brighter light on what’s happening today with rollbacks to years of progress made in protecting our environment through the current administration’s reprehensible decisions. The stellar efforts of our own Edmond Muskie are being thrown away like toxic mill sludge.

[Pbloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book deserves 6 stars for content. It is an absolutely fascinating description of the decline of a rural industrial town in Maine that is similar to the town I grew up in. If you want to really get insights on the decline of industrial America, the roots of the opioid crisis, the political disaffection that led to so much current strife and the permanent blight of industrial pollution, then this is the book for you. If all that sounds too depressing, the stories of family bonds, Acadian culture/history, and community support to keep everyone afloat are certainly a positive offset.

The author did an amazing amount of deep research. I though I understood the impact of industrial pollution but I learned how ignorant I was of the real details and consequences. After reading this book, you will never drive through or visit a small factory town in America without a completely different understanding of what you are seeing. I'm really glad I read this book and learned a lot more from it than I expected.

So why did I only give it 4 stars? This is the author's first book. The writing is excessively florid and self-conscious. It felt like she needed to make sure she covered ALL the ground she researched and that it all needed to be enhanced with language that was intended to keep it interesting. Unfortunately she achieved the opposite. I kept wanting to skip sections of breathless prose but was worried I would miss something interesting.

I'm giving this book 4 stars because I don't want anyone to be angry at me after they stumble over the prose. That being said I think this is a very important book that illuminated many subjects for me and was well worth reading.