Sumner 200: Portrait of a Small Maine Town

Sumner 200 is an unique treatment of a town history, using historical, anthropological, and photodocumentary approaches. The first part of the book has a historical essay by historian George Healy. It is accompanied by vintage photographs of the area and its people. The second part consists of eighty-five interviews with area residents. The interviews probe how people feel about living in a small , rural town in its transition from an agricultural community to a suburb of a small city. The interviews also touch on the lives of people who are as young as six years old to those who are in their late nineties, evoking everyday experiences as well as memories of the past. It is a fascinating an provocative portrait. People reading this book one hundred years hence will savor its frankness and breadth. The interviews are accompanied by black and white documentary photographs, sometimes of the people interviewed, sometimes of the whole groups representing organizations and families of the town. The photographs have been compared by reviewers to work of Walker Evans and Richard Avedon. This book would be of interest to historians, social scientists (anthropologists sociologists, oral historians, folklorists) and documentary photographers.