Wicked Weird & Wily Yankees

Incredible Stories of the Prophets Vagabonds Fortune-Tellers Hermits Lords and Poets Who Shaped New England<BR /><BR />New England has been a lot of things—an economic hub a cultural center a sports mecca—but it is also home to many of the strangest individuals in America. Wicked Weird & Wily Yankees explores and celebrates the eccentric personalities who have left their mark in a way no other book has before. Some folks are known others not so much but the motley cast of characters that emerges from these pages represents a fascinating cross-section of New England’s most peculiar denizens. Look inside to find:<BR /><BR /><ul><li>Tales of the Leather Man and the Old Darned Man who both spent years crisscrossing the highways and byways of the northeast their origins and motivation to remain forever unknown.</li><li>The magnificent homes of William Gillette and Madame Sherri famed socialites who constructed enormous castles in the New England countryside.</li><li>William Sheldon’s apocalyptic prophecies and wild claims including that the American Revolution had hastened the end of the world and that he could—through his mastery of the “od-force”—prevent cholera across the eastern United States.</li><li>The mysterious fortune-teller Moll Pitcher whose predictions some say were sought by European royalty and whose fame made her the subject of poems plays and novels long after her death.</li></ul><BR />Stretching back to the colonial era and covering the development and evolution of New England society through the beginning of the twenty-first century this book captures the rebel spirit prickly demeanors and wily attitudes that have made the region the hotbed for oddity it is today.<BR /><BR />*All Royalties Donated to the Education and Youth Programs at the Connecticut River Museum*