Books like Safe Harbor — picked by fans

Ulrich, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for A Midwife's Tale, first wrote this ground-breaking study of women in early New England. With her characteristically elegant prose and inspired organization, she details the varied roles women played in family, community, and religious life. An illuminating work, and a page-turner.

I’ve read many of this author’s works and enjoyed them all, but this one really dug in, grabbed on, and held tight.

I loved the fact that it covered generations instead of a short timeframe; it gave me more insight into the people and relationships. Transplanting a Low Country girl used to a simple life to the summer home of an upper-crust New Englander accustomed to only the finer things promises conflict, which we got in spades, starting with a mother-in-law who could barely hide her hostility.

This highly elevates the uncomfortable dynamics in extended families, and the challenges overcome—and those that aren’t—make the story incredibly satisfying.

I have always loved the image of Jo March hiding up in the attic (she calls it a “garret” because it’s more romantic) of her family’s New England house, munching on russet apples and writing furiously away with her pet rat, Scrabble, as her muse, or curling up with Jane Eyre—it’s the only place she can be alone.

She’s one of the classic aspiring young writers of literature—a totally unconventional, headstrong girl with big ambitions who has provided inspiration for her real-life counterparts for generations, me included.

Little Women + witches and magic = YES PLEASE!!!! I mean, what else can I say? I grew up loving magic and stories of those who could use it. I also grew up loving Louisa May Alcott’s classic because it was about a family that was poor, just like mine.

So when I found this charming book on a shelf, I raced home to devour it, which I did in record time. The cozy story and gentle artwork lend themselves to a perfect read by the fireplace with a warm cup of tea.  

Dooling's nonfiction account of the searches for a girl and two women who disappeared in New England in the 1940s and 1950s is another good example of weaving together true crime and historic context. Only one of the victims' remains have been found, but all of the victims may have met up with the still-unknown killer. In addition to covering the missing person searches as they were conducted in their times, Dooling provides new hope by looking back on these cases with twenty-first-century eyes.  

Searching for a sense of family and belonging. Steve searches for his biological parents, but no one in the government system can help him. No one can tell him why, with obvious African-American features with the last name of Klakowicz. Puts me in the mind of why no one in my family can tell me why I'm named after the household maid.

It was impossible to drag me from the book. A Chance In The World is the unbelievable true story told by Steve Pemberton about this broken boy destined to become a man of resilience and vision. The book was turned into a movie.

A superb history of a particular landscape in the midst of profound political, economic, and environmental transformation; it is a wonderful example of interdisciplinary research.

The book explores the Connecticut River valley in colonial New England, and shows how the economic needs and interactions of the Native American and European inhabitants completely reshaped the ecology of the region.

My favorite chapter is Roberts’s brilliant analysis of the lucrative trade in beaver pelts, which not only shifted the balance of power between Native Americans and European settlers, it also eradicated the beavers and their extensive network of dams, erasing the vast wetlands of the region and leaving the river itself unrecognizable.

A ground-breaking work, which demonstrates how the theoretical witch was embodied by real women, and how a seemingly bizarre fantasy was plausible in among the shapes and rhythms of daily life. This influential study is as much a social, economic and cultural history of seventeenth-century New England as it is strictly speaking a history of witchcraft – indeed, Karlsen demonstrates clearly that the latter cannot be assimilated with an appreciation of the former. Context is everything, and without it we just fall back on stereotypes and tired assumptions.

Witches and neighbours were two-sides of the same coin, the former a projection of the hostile emotions of the latter, and, as Karlsen explains, this fraught relationship was fundamentally gendered. To appreciate how some people were accused of witchcraft, we need first to explore relationships between people in the community, including relations between women. Honour, reputation, age, status and so on, were… show more.

John Putnam Demos remains the “dean” of historians of the Salem witch trials. 

Entertaining Satan remains his most impactful contribution to the study of the events of 1692 by providing their cultural context in early New England, upon which historians have built over the years expanding upon Demos’ findings.

Perhaps his greatest contribution is his interdisciplinary approach invoking the research tools of psychology and sociology, as well as cultural history. His concluding chapter, “Communities: Witchcraft over Time,” provides broadly, excellent insights drawn from his extensive research.  

What does it mean to be forgotten and to be remembered? This brilliant collection of short stories is anchored by the title story about a walk through rural Maine directly after World War One by two male lovers, both musicians and one a returning soldier, recording folk songs ostensibly for his conservatory.

Each story has a companion in the compilation, which I found to be an incredibly effective device for exploring the emotional impact of memory. The writing is so dispassionate yet devastating in its exploration of how even long-ago relationships can be brought to the surface by rediscovered artifacts or found objects.

I found the descriptive world-building second to none, and what it means to survive tragedy, inspirational.