A Gift of Maple Syrup and Other Stories

By chance Olivia Spenser-Graf and Sadie Hunt turned onto Route 33 thinking the autumn foliage too spectacular to bypass. A year later bibliophile Olivia would be telling customers that it had been their Robert Frost moment except ours was the road taken that brought us here. <p> Only a few miles up that road they pulled into a weedy parking area drawn to the boarded-up one-room schoolhouse that within a year would be renovated and opened as Stacks and Snacks a bookshop and natural foods eatery.<p> In eighteen stories some touching some raucous Eric Selby examines redemption grace family and community dysfunction through the lives of small-town people living in Gilead County Vermont. His unforgettable characters include a beloved old-time barber a cast of frustrated teachers and students a family whose farm has to be sold religious nuts a retired out-of-state couple with long-held hostilities and a hymn-singing child who confuses hosanna with Obama.<p> As people in the county grapple with their problems Sadie and Olivia find themselves woven into most of their lives. <i>A Gift of Maple Syrup and Other Stories</i> offers insights into the human condition. These stories celebrate the endurance of the human spirit.