Perhaps the most controversial issue in Maine today is the fast-tracking of wind-energy farms throughout the state. One of the planned projects is slated to be developed in a place near and dear to me: remote Highland Plantation, home of my friends Greg and Pat Drummond who run the friendliest sporting camp in Maine, Claybrook Mountain Lodge. In the new Down East we decided to take a big-picture view of the issues around wind energy, from the opportunities and challenges of building offshore wind farms, to the nuts and bolts of turbines, to arguments against wide-scale development of Maine mountaintops. I also offer a personal anecdote.
Barry Award Nomination
I received word this afternoon that the editors of Deadly Pleasures Magazine have nominated The Poacher's Son for a Barry Award in the category of Best First Novel. I'm grateful to the judges for rescuing me from a long and grinding Hump Day!
The winner will be announced in September at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. I'm tempted to close with a "meet me in St. Louis" joke.
But I won't.
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A PopMatters Best Book
PopMatters has chosen The Poacher's Son for its list of "Best Books of 2010." Not best mysteries, but best books. The list also includes Philip Roth, Stephen King, Emma Donoghue, and my old college drinking buddy Chang-rae Lee.
End of year lists are fluid; the best book you read in January may not make a list made in December, even if it is, in many ways, a better book than one you read in November. Stellar prose, tight plotting, even memorable characters are not enough to keep a book in mind for three months, let alone 12. This may seem harsh, but for a book to truly belong on a Best Of list, it has to meet one extra, often forgotten criterion: it must be engaging. “Best books” must capture the reader on not just an intellectual level, but on an emotional one, too.
If booklists have their own particular trend—and I think they do—this list presents an interesting, even surprising, take on 2010. Five of the 30+ titles present here are comics collections; many are dark and twisty, full of horrors that are sometimes a little too close to home (Super Sad True Love Story). More are “retro” or “vintage”, written in, or inspired by the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. Yet most unexpected is the number of crossover titles on the list—not just two young adult novels (The Thief, For the Win), but adult novels with teenage protagonists, like Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation, Jayne Ann Philips’ Lark & Termite, and Emma Donoghue’s Room, narrated by five-year-old Jack.
While these reflections on the past—and somewhat dreary prophecies of the future—may seem depressing, they’re not all as pathos-inducing as the reissue of Brian Moore’s The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. Tucked into this list are several small glimmers of something sweeter, something to temper the Literary Drearies we all love and appreciate. And that’s just the way it should be.
All I can say about this is that I'm honored—and speechless.
One Million Acres
One of the subplots of The Poacher's Son concerns the sale of thousands of acres of the Maine North Woods to a timber company that is more interested in real estate development than sustainable forestry. Maine has seen numerous sales of this nature over the past decade or so—and the forest is still changing hands, as today's Bangor Daily News reports:
Under a deal slated to be completed Feb. 1, a company called BBC Land LLC with ties to a Colorado billionaire will purchase more than 900,000 acres — much of it in eastern and western Maine — from current owner GMO Renewable Resources.
John Cashwell, a local consultant for BBC Land, said very little will change under the new ownership. BBC Land will continue to manage the land as a working forest and will still allow public access for recreation, Cashwell said.
Cashwell declined to name the individuals behind BBC Land but described them as “a family from away with ties to Maine” committed to keeping it a working forest. He also declined to name a purchase price.
“This is not a short-term play,” Cashwell said. “It’s a family that is in it for the long term.”
But documents filed last week with the Maine Secretary of State’s Office listed John Malone of Englewood, Colo., as the only manager for BBC Land.
Malone is chairman of Liberty Media, an Englewood-based company with diverse media interests that include the cable channel QVC, the travel website Expedia.com, the Atlanta Braves baseball team and Sirius XM satellite radio.
Ranked No. 110 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, Malone also has emerged as one of the country’s largest individual private landowners in recent years. Malone was No. 5 on a list of the Top 100 landowners in the U.S. in 2010 that was published by The Land Report magazine.
Malone was said to own 1.2 million acres, roughly the same amount as the Irving family, Maine’s largest single landowner. Depending on the scope of Malone’s involvement in the BBC Land deal, he could challenge or even top fellow media mogul Ted Turner as the largest private landowner in the U.S.
Malone already owns tens of thousands of acres in Maine. In 2002, he purchased more than 53,000 acres in western Maine and had previously purchased roughly 15,000 acres around Spencer Lake.
By coincidence, Spencer Lake was the site of the Hobbstown POW camp mentioned in the prologue of The Poacher's Son. But unlike the board members of my fictional Wendigo Timber Company, Malone has so far proven to be responsible steward of his land holdings in western Maine.