By Kerri Arsenault. As for the two thousand new chemicals introduced into the US every year and the eighty thousand chemicals still untested, how can any agency—let alone an underfunded, understaffed, and often industry-friendly government agency—possibly keep up? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. Hardcover format. $27.99. Comments / 0. His website, which I consulted at the time, also advises on funeral and cemetery etiquette, like what to wear, what not to say, what you’ll need, how to memorialize someone you love. The price we all paid. Someone leaves town. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. A motorcycle growls by. Trees along the Androscoggin are still naked in their transformation. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople. “Now I’m thirsty,” I say, sarcastically. After they assembled his improved skeleton, workers wriggled up and out of the neck, one at a time—like the snakes on Medusa’s head come to life in lumberjack disguise—then reattached his head. Against a resistant president and House of Representatives and industry inaction, he helped enact the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act by trying to answer a question he often asked himself: how do you create an environment people can enjoy while protecting it? While four generations of Meader men made goals, showed up, did what they said they would do, James’s goals didn’t include managing the funeral home or living in Rumford, Maine. We lean on science for proof but it rarely provides it. Or vice versa. --Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance It doesn’t give you the next day off. Bittersweet memories and a long-buried atrocity combine for a heartfelt, unflinching, striking narrative combination.”, Publisher’s Weekly starred review: 5/19/2020. Arthur and I have been talking for hours, and by now the sun has tilted west. At least not yet. Hello Select your address All Hello, Sign in. When Kerri Arsenault was growing up in Mexico, Maine, nothing loomed larger than the Rumford paper mill across the Androscoggin River, which gave her small town a measure of prosperity and security, even as mill waste polluted the river and locals nicknamed the area “Cancer Valley.” Like Kerri Arsenault I grew up in Mexico, Maine the town across the river from the paper mill that dominates life, the economy, and the environment in the River Valley. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. to post a message … In telling the story of the town where generations of her family have lived and died, she raises important and timely questions. … the force with which your personal narrative drives the story, the pressure that makes so many of your sentences diamond-like-- compact, sharpest-edged, glittering. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. Other Muffler Men held hot dogs, fried chicken, and one in Illinois was found holding a rocket. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural town of Mexico, Maine, where for over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that provided jobs for most residents, including three generations of her family. My father’s death certificate is testimony to these things. It’s also breathtakingly well-researched, wide-ranging, cogently angry, brilliantly written, harrowing, heartbreaking, urgent, and timely. In telling the story of the town where generations of her family have lived and died, she raises important and timely questions." Everyone should read it. The name is still Meader & Son, but there’s no longer a son involved. Scientists are trained to be inconclusive and cautious. In the US the regulatory approach is largely innocent until proven guilty. Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. she’ll say she’s not 100 percent sure you won’t. The author’s reflections and stories took me back to my childhood and my own love/hate relationship with my community. Water stampedes over the crisp edge of the dam. My mother had wanted to sue them for medical malpractice, but she didn’t have definitive proof; no autopsy was ever done. She tried to remedy what she could and has moved on. The mill, while providing community, work, and stability, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and our health. Spring is when the funeral business tends to pick up, Arthur says, when Meader & Son “serves” more families. So if the law fails us, what else can we do? . Publisher’s Weekly list of “Best Books of 2020”, Barnes & Noble’s list of “Best Social Science Books 2020”, Amazon Editors’ Choice “Best Biographies and Memoirs 2020”, Indie Next Pick, September 2020 (by independent booksellers), Literary Hub’s “September's Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies”, Barnes & Noble’s “Essential Election Reading”, Publishers Weekly’s “Top 10 books for Politics & Current Events”, Mr. Porter’s “Ultimate Guide To Labor Day Weekend 2020”, BuzzFeed’s “Twenty-one books to get excited about this Fall”, Literary Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2020”, The Revelator’s “New Environmental Books to Motivate Action”, Oprah magazine’s “Best Books of Fall 2020”, Newsweek’s “Fall Must-Read Fall Nonfiction”, Goodreads’ “September 2020 top History/Biography Pick”, Goodreads’ “Six Great Books Hitting Shelves This Week” 9/1/20, These bookstores have been generous to me and I hope you will be generous to them: 32 Avenue Books (CO) * Arcadia Books (WI) * Auntie’s (WA) * Barnes & Noble * Belmont Books (MA) * Blue Hill Books (ME) * Bogan Books (ME) * The Bookshop of Beverly Farms (MA) * Brookline Booksmith (MA) * Brown University Bookstore (RI) * Bull Moose (ME) * Center for Fiction (NY) * City Lights (CA) * Devaney, Doak, & Garrett (ME) * Fact & Fiction (MT) * Galaxy Bookshop (VT) * Gibson’s Bookstore (NH) * Greenlight Bookstore (NY) * Gulf of Maine Books (ME) * Harvard Book Store (MA) * Hickory Stick Bookshop (CT) * IndieBound (Online) * Interabang Books (TX) * Left Bank Books (ME) * Longfellow Books (ME) * Market Block Books (NY) * Northshire Bookstore (VT) * Oblong Books (CT) * Oxford Exchange (FL) * Point Reyes Books (CA) * Politics and Prose (DC) * Powell’s (OR) * PRINT: a bookstore (ME) * RJ Julia (CT) * Rocky Mountain Land Library (CO) * Sherman’s (ME) * Twenty Stories (RI) or your favorite local bookstore, Kirkus starred review: 5/27/2020. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. Then, people started fearing chemicals of any kind, even ones exonerated by science. Review: 'Mill Town: Reckoning With What Remains,' by Kerri Arsenault NONFICTION: A disturbing look at the fragile existence of small-town Maine weaves personal history and … Muskie always saw both sides to every argument, the kind of guy who went hunting as a kid but would never shoot anything. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. After I leave Arthur and Sheila’s house, I walk over to the Tourist Information Booth parking lot to see the falls. And even if a cancer cluster is found in your neighborhood, they may not be able to determine the exact cause or do anything about it. As corporate greed and malfeasance abound, the community is torn between the mill jobs they desperately need and their struggles with health problems, including a … This essay was adapted from Mill Town, published by St. Martin’s Press. One more question: why wasn’t my father’s name on his union’s memorial that commemorated men who died from working at the mill? You work in a paper mill like my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, you get cancer. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. He was overhauled between 2000 and 2002, including a paint job, a new ax, and steel supports secured to a huge block of concrete. Everyone’s emotions were splintered and raw. Kerri Arsenault's Mill Town tells the story of the community she grew up in, her extended family of hardworking Catholic Franco-Americans in a small mill town in Maine, but it’s also a sweeping, brutal expose of American corporations’ ruining natural resources, poisoning the environment, endangering the health and safety of the working class, and hiding and denying their crimes. That statue has been around as long as I remember, although it used to tower above the Village Shoppe across the street. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Small towns from Maine to Minnesota claim Bunyan as their own, yet everyone agrees the boy giant was the hero to all woodsmen. Mill Town, by Kerri Arsenault, is about Mexico Maine and the love/hate relationship the town’s residents have with the paper mill that has given them life and death. From there, we walk up to a landing, and into the kitchen. Kerri’s book Mill Town is not a family narrative but rather a well-written dialogue along a voyage of personal and professional discovery that should cause all readers to question just what the price of progress is. During my father’s wake, funeral, and burial, we were shown where to stand, where to sit, where to stand and shake everyone’s hand. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. But blame, like a river’s flow, is a fugitive act, because its target shape-shifts as the current of time presses forward, as fugitive as finding the link from pollution to disease. Cart All. *** I received an MFA from the New School, and studied in the Master Programme in communication for development at Malmö University, Sweden. The nursing board determined there was no violation of the law and voted to dismiss my mother’s complaint a year after my father died in their care, and they considered the matter closed. “Mill Town is a powerful, blistering, devastating book. A huge Paul Bunyan statue looms over the river where Bunyan-sized logs once floated downstream toward the mill. Even if a cancer cluster is found in your neighborhood, they may not be able to determine the exact cause or do anything about it. That … Was it because the sacs in his lungs took all they could take? Author Kerri Arsenault’s new book “Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains” (St. Martin's Press, $27.99) takes the reader inside one such Maine town. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. Some people do not. Today, Andrew invites Kerri Arsenault, Carl Hoffman, Dale Maharidge, and Tom Zoellner to discuss how to fix America. Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, Kerri Arsenault’s pursuit of truth is as compassionate as it is relentless. I had a happy childhood, but years after I moved away, I realized the price I paid for that childhood. Kerri Arsenault’s Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains is a heartfelt story of community and family twined with her personal passion for unveiling truths held captive inside convoluted industry acronyms and jargon, broken URLs and dusty file boxes. We discussed what my father would have wanted, what we wanted, what other people may want, and were shepherded gently through those final tasks: photos to display, writing the obituary, financial matters. In the meantime, toxins accumulate in our bodies, their presence a placeholder for something that may or may not multiply out of control. Legend maintains when Bunyan’s cradle rocked, the motion caused huge waves that sank ships. Maine's premier, independent public media resource. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. We engaged Meader & Son when my father died in 2014. Mexico and neighboring Rumford have been defined for over 100 years by the paper mill. Proud at his longevity, Arthur said at the time he hoped his then three-and-a-half year-old son, James, would take up the profession after him. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. When we leave home, as James and I did, we leave behind our past but when we return, we encounter a version of home built of legends true and false. We keep them hidden in the earth, invisible to the naked eye. When Kerri Arsenault was growing up in Mexico, Maine, nothing loomed larger than the Rumford paper mill across the Androscoggin River, which gave her small town a measure of prosperity and security, even as mill waste polluted the river and locals nicknamed the area “Cancer Valley.” Kerri Arsenault’s hometown of Mexico, Maine, is small, remote, and working-class. I’m not sure I know. A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival? And as my mother stated in her letter to the nursing board, he “died in excruciating pain.” The nurse tending him inserted a catheter improperly. By Kerri Arsenault. “How about a glass of scotch?” he asks with a quick lift of his eyebrows. In addition, if several family members get cancer, it doesn’t count toward the cluster evidence you need. The permutations mirror what it’s like when we look at galaxies in outer space. Stream an excerpt from Mill Town, courtesy of Macmillan Audio.. They get cancer. Maine Public Radio My mother was his best caregiver and spent every day trying to get him to live. The standards for permissible amounts of toxics allowable for humans to intake usually only deal with one substance at a time, and don’t consider the burdens of one chemical or carcinogen or toxic in coordination with another, or the cumulative effects of all of them or some of them together. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. She has laid out, in elegant prose and harrowing reportage, the price we may all pay, and in this, she has managed to create at once both a cautionary tale and a literary treasure. MILL TOWN. Arthur runs a funeral home—Meader & Son—the same one his father and grandfather owned, first as a partnership and then as a wholly owned operation. There’s nothing in the recent medical records to show my father’s triple bypass decades ago contributed to his death. So when I drive back over the Piscataqua River Bridge with Mexico and Rumford in my rearview mirror, I may not see “true love,” as E. B. Kerri Arsenault, author, “Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains;” book critic, book editor at Orion magazine, and a contributing editor at The Literary Hub.Arsenault is also a mentor for PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program. And it doesn’t appear the CDC analyzes how individual bodies respond to specific environmental factors. He also whittled a pipe from a hickory tree and could outrun buckshot. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. James and I both grew up skiing at Black Mountain, and like our fathers, we always kept one eye on immediate obstacles and one eye ahead in order to determine the best way downhill. From there we walk through a fire door built into a two-foot-thick wall in the basement of the house, which then empties into a big sunroom. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. An idiopathic diagnosis, like in my father’s death certificate, blames the body itself for its own undoing. Each is the author of a critically acclaimed new book about contemporary America: Arsenault’s Mill Town, Hoffman’s Liar’s Circus, Maharidge’s Fucked at … Review: 'Mill Town: Reckoning With What Remains,' by Kerri Arsenault NONFICTION: A disturbing look at the fragile existence of small-town Maine weaves personal history and environmental alarm. For years, asbestos manufacturers knew about the dangers of the fiber and did nothing except block the government from regulating it. The Rumford selectmen had voted in 2009 to use $6,500 from their economic development fund to create Babe, figuring he would encourage tourists to follow his meandering line around town. -Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance In 1982, on Meader & Son’s 65th anniversary, the local paper profiled the funeral home. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. The law also includes the EPA, which has been accused of colluding with industry at the expense of humans and the planet it’s tasked to protect. I’d found no shortage of effects but determining causes was like catching pollution in plastic buckets in the wind as one environmental group tried to do. Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man, For the Nasher Sculpture Center’s “Shelf Life” column: This memoir-slash-history tracks the rise and mostly decline of Mexico, Maine, a small mill town on the Androscoggin River that has been the home of the author’s family for generations. Those two words “underlying cause” seem to mock his death. Why did they stay? For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. In telling the story of the town where generations of her family have lived and died, she raises important and … It didn’t help that industry fought back against regulation with corruption and lies, deploying an alphabet soup of sinister acronyms like CERCLA, which sound like chemicals themselves. I’d love to see in the Information Booth some real information—a pamphlet outlining the path of mercury, dioxin, and other toxics the paper mill released and are part of our heritage, too. REVIEW: Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan Slaght, Air Mail. What about before he was sick, when he worked as a pipefitter in the mill? It indicates his immediate cause of death was esophageal cancer “due to (or as a consequence of)” lung carcinoma; “due to (or as a consequence of)” prostate cancer; “due to (or as a consequence of)” coronary artery disease, with “other significant conditions contributing to the death but not resulting in the underlying cause given in the above consequences: COPD, respiratory failure with PE, failure to thrive, aspiration.”. Tender, angry, full of respect and bewilderment, it is a complex love letter to a hometown. If they were listing all underlying causes, “veteran” should be there, as he probably was exposed to asbestos then. . On the wall of a downstairs guest bedroom, a photo of him skiing at Black Mountain in 1963, heading through a slalom gate. Next to it, a photo of James, also skiing, also heading through a slalom gate. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working-class town of Mexico, Maine. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. 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