A Book of Fields: Tales from the Pioneer Valley

A Book of Fields is a collection of fictional stories about the people of the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. Each story takes its name from a town that ends in “field”--Ashfield, Deerfield, Greenfield and so forth. Each story has characters and locales from the towns that will be recognizable to anyone who has spent any time in the area. A few of the stories share characters. Almost every story deals with a crime, or something like a crime, but this is not a crime novel. Taken together, the stories in A Book of Fields are a portrait of a world that is rapidly disappearing--the lush farms and fields of the Connecticut River basin shrinking every year, and the agricultural way of life giving way to suburbia. The people change as the land use changes. A Book of Fields is about this time, this place, and the hardy, independent, passionate and sometimes hardheaded people who live there.