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Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town
In rich first-person narrative, Dogtown tells the strange, dark story of a wilderness ghost town that has enthralled artists, writers, and eccentrics—and of a brutal murder committed there. Documenting its history and lore, E ast explores the possibility that certain landscapes wield their own unique power.
The area known as Dogtown—an isolated colonial ruin and the surrounding 3,600-acre woodland in historic seaside Gloucester, Massachusetts—has always exerted a powerful influence over artists, writers, eccentrics, and nature lovers. But its history is woven through with tales of hallucinations, pirates, ghost sightings, witches, drifters, and violence. A 1984 murder there continues to loom large in Gloucester’s collective a mentally disturbed local man crushed the skull of a schoolteacher as she walked the woods.
In alternating chapters, East interlaces the story of this murder with Dogtown’s bizarre history. The colonial settlement was a haven for former slaves, prostitutes, and witches until it was abandoned 180 years ago. Since then, Dogtown has inspired various people, including a millionaire who carved Protestant precepts into its boulders; the Modernist painter Marsden Hartley, whom Dogtown saved from a crippling depression; the drug-addled poet Charles Olson; a coven of witches that still holds ceremonies there today; and the murderer, who spent much of his life in Dogtown’s woods.
The murder tapped a vein of thinking that has quietly endured in Gloucester for some people rallied around Dogtown protectively, but others blamed it for the tragedy.
In luminous, insightful prose, Dogtown tells an evocative tale of a community both haunted and bound together by its love of this strange, forgotten place and its denizens.
The area known as Dogtown—an isolated colonial ruin and the surrounding 3,600-acre woodland in historic seaside Gloucester, Massachusetts—has always exerted a powerful influence over artists, writers, eccentrics, and nature lovers. But its history is woven through with tales of hallucinations, pirates, ghost sightings, witches, drifters, and violence. A 1984 murder there continues to loom large in Gloucester’s collective a mentally disturbed local man crushed the skull of a schoolteacher as she walked the woods.
In alternating chapters, East interlaces the story of this murder with Dogtown’s bizarre history. The colonial settlement was a haven for former slaves, prostitutes, and witches until it was abandoned 180 years ago. Since then, Dogtown has inspired various people, including a millionaire who carved Protestant precepts into its boulders; the Modernist painter Marsden Hartley, whom Dogtown saved from a crippling depression; the drug-addled poet Charles Olson; a coven of witches that still holds ceremonies there today; and the murderer, who spent much of his life in Dogtown’s woods.
The murder tapped a vein of thinking that has quietly endured in Gloucester for some people rallied around Dogtown protectively, but others blamed it for the tragedy.
In luminous, insightful prose, Dogtown tells an evocative tale of a community both haunted and bound together by its love of this strange, forgotten place and its denizens.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published December 9, 2009
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806 people want to read
About the author
Elyssa East
2 books11 followersElyssa East received her B.A. in art history from Reed College and her M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia Universitys School of the Arts. Her writing has appeared in numerous New England regional magazines. She grew up in Georgia and now lives in New York City."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 171 reviews
June 18, 2011
Meandering and surprisingly boring, focusing too much on minutia. In 1984 a woman was murdered in Dogtown, the abandoned interior of an island. Elyssa is entranced by the area because of a minor painter, and goes there to research the area and the murder case.
There's a lot of problems with this. First of all Dogtown isn't really a ghost town as she writes it. It's the ruins of a town in the middle of an island, and she stretches the ruins a bit. There's a lot of TALK about how mystical and supernatural the place is, but there's very little information, and she talks as much as about Gloucester as it. Towards the end of the book, she admits its mostly her imagination getting away with her, but you wish it did: it would have made for a livelier book.
The murder is dull. Teacher gets killed, we get paragraph after paragraph of what the murderer thinks and his day to day itinerary. The murderer lies so much that you can't trust any account, and she spends as much time going over the false accounts.
The rest is intellectual and past history of the island and famous visitors to fill the book, since there really doesn't seem to be much on Dogtown. She intercuts between all of these constantly, which makes the book feel jumpy. It's as if someone took a collection of magazine articles on the subject, and mashed them together.
There's also overselling. She goes on about the "Whale Jaw," a rock that seems to be emblematic of the place, but when she shows the picture its just, well...a pretty bog-standard rock. The few pictures of the area in the book show typical a New England forest. (I live in semi-rural Connecticut) Everyone seems to think the murder case has ruined dogtown, but there's no real proof or even any consistent idea among them what it is.
Nice idea, but wasted and better suited to an article in Yankee magazine than a book.
There's a lot of problems with this. First of all Dogtown isn't really a ghost town as she writes it. It's the ruins of a town in the middle of an island, and she stretches the ruins a bit. There's a lot of TALK about how mystical and supernatural the place is, but there's very little information, and she talks as much as about Gloucester as it. Towards the end of the book, she admits its mostly her imagination getting away with her, but you wish it did: it would have made for a livelier book.
The murder is dull. Teacher gets killed, we get paragraph after paragraph of what the murderer thinks and his day to day itinerary. The murderer lies so much that you can't trust any account, and she spends as much time going over the false accounts.
The rest is intellectual and past history of the island and famous visitors to fill the book, since there really doesn't seem to be much on Dogtown. She intercuts between all of these constantly, which makes the book feel jumpy. It's as if someone took a collection of magazine articles on the subject, and mashed them together.
There's also overselling. She goes on about the "Whale Jaw," a rock that seems to be emblematic of the place, but when she shows the picture its just, well...a pretty bog-standard rock. The few pictures of the area in the book show typical a New England forest. (I live in semi-rural Connecticut) Everyone seems to think the murder case has ruined dogtown, but there's no real proof or even any consistent idea among them what it is.
Nice idea, but wasted and better suited to an article in Yankee magazine than a book.
May 17, 2010
There was such a wealth of material here, but sadly it was not well-handled by the author. In the hands of a better writer (someone like Richard Preston, for example), this had the potential to be a great book, but as it was, it felt naive and clumsy and overly self-referential. Disappointing.
One last note on this book: I do think that some places are magnets for badness, although I don't know why. Is it supernatural? Is it that once a place gets a reputation, it attracts the wrong kind of people? Is it simple geography, i.e. that densely wooded areas provide better cover for people who want to do nasty things? I don't know, but I do think that my hometown is one of these places, a kind of matrix of vileness. From the Wikipedia entry on serial killer Ed Kemper: "At the time of Kemper's murder spree in Santa Cruz, another serial killer named Herbert Mullin was also active, earning the small California town the title of 'Murder Capital Of The World.' Also adding to the college town's infamy was the fact that Kemper's and Mullin's crimes were preceded three years earlier by multiple murders committed by John Linley Frazier, who murdered Santa Cruz eye surgeon Victor Ohta and his family. Kemper and Mullin were briefly held in adjoining cells, with the former angrily accusing the latter of stealing his body-dumping sites." That was in the 1970s, and many other terrible things have happened since then in this little town of 30,000. It's a creepy place, a frightening place (I feel safer walking around borderline neighborhoods in New York City than I do in downtown Santa Cruz) and one day I might write a book about it.
One last note on this book: I do think that some places are magnets for badness, although I don't know why. Is it supernatural? Is it that once a place gets a reputation, it attracts the wrong kind of people? Is it simple geography, i.e. that densely wooded areas provide better cover for people who want to do nasty things? I don't know, but I do think that my hometown is one of these places, a kind of matrix of vileness. From the Wikipedia entry on serial killer Ed Kemper: "At the time of Kemper's murder spree in Santa Cruz, another serial killer named Herbert Mullin was also active, earning the small California town the title of 'Murder Capital Of The World.' Also adding to the college town's infamy was the fact that Kemper's and Mullin's crimes were preceded three years earlier by multiple murders committed by John Linley Frazier, who murdered Santa Cruz eye surgeon Victor Ohta and his family. Kemper and Mullin were briefly held in adjoining cells, with the former angrily accusing the latter of stealing his body-dumping sites." That was in the 1970s, and many other terrible things have happened since then in this little town of 30,000. It's a creepy place, a frightening place (I feel safer walking around borderline neighborhoods in New York City than I do in downtown Santa Cruz) and one day I might write a book about it.
January 19, 2010
To much going back and forth between far past, current time and murder. It didn't flow for me and it was hard to finish it.
December 27, 2009
Dogtown is a decayed colonial ruin nestled in the wilderness outside Gloucester, Massachusetts. Although it was officially abandoned in 1839, after its last resident was carted away to the poorhouse, this rural slum continues to attract people sensitive to its powerful charm. It inspired several of Beat poet Charles Olson’s famous Maximus poems, and Modernist painter Marsden Hartley felt a crippling depression recede after he committed Dogtown’s unique scenery to canvas.
Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town conveys in print the same chill that the Blair Witch Project aroused onscreen. The Dogtown woods, whose residents once included witches and freed slaves, seem to be alive. Some who sense its magic, like Huntley and Olson, are inspired to create great art, while others, like mentally disturbed outcast Peter Hodgkins, were compelled to kill.
Author Elyssa East, captivated by Huntley’s Dogtown art, visited the area in search of the same healing influence that soothed the painter. Her impressions, along with the story of the original Dogtown settlement and the 1984 murder that cast a pall over the woods forever, comprise this book.
On the surface, it seems that East is trying to cram three books into one: Dogtown’s grim history, the 1984 murder of Anne Natti, and a memoir of her visits. Thanks to her clear and compelling writing style and a careful dedication of each chapter to one subject alone, she makes it work, and beautifully. Dogtown captures not only the history of the wilderness ghost town, but also its spirit. It’s a rare achievement, and I look forward to future books by this author.
Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town conveys in print the same chill that the Blair Witch Project aroused onscreen. The Dogtown woods, whose residents once included witches and freed slaves, seem to be alive. Some who sense its magic, like Huntley and Olson, are inspired to create great art, while others, like mentally disturbed outcast Peter Hodgkins, were compelled to kill.
Author Elyssa East, captivated by Huntley’s Dogtown art, visited the area in search of the same healing influence that soothed the painter. Her impressions, along with the story of the original Dogtown settlement and the 1984 murder that cast a pall over the woods forever, comprise this book.
On the surface, it seems that East is trying to cram three books into one: Dogtown’s grim history, the 1984 murder of Anne Natti, and a memoir of her visits. Thanks to her clear and compelling writing style and a careful dedication of each chapter to one subject alone, she makes it work, and beautifully. Dogtown captures not only the history of the wilderness ghost town, but also its spirit. It’s a rare achievement, and I look forward to future books by this author.
November 7, 2010
I wanted to like this book. I've been to Dogtown in Gloucester - its' great for a dog outing and the book did win the New England Award in Nonfiction. But I just couldn't get into it. I had to force my self to finish it. It was long, rambling and kept jumping around between the present day of the author researching the book to the settlers in the 1700's to some poet and some other painter. It was just a disjointed mess.
July 4, 2021
I really enjoyed this book despite it focusing mostly on true crime. I went into it thinking there would be a bit more history on Dogtown outside of the 1984 murder that occurred there. The author delved into art and history and true crime while alternating the chapters between the 1984 event and older history.
I’d like to visit some day but won’t be going alone after this book!
I’d like to visit some day but won’t be going alone after this book!
April 8, 2023
I should have loved this book.
* True Crime Elements
* Well-known "witchy" location
* Location I'm familiar with
* Historical timelines
* Nature-y stuff
Yeah. Nope.
This book attempted to document the Dogtown area of Cape Ann/Gloucester through the lens of...
And that's the problem. Elyssa East seems to have had no idea what the point of her book was. Through the lens of her art hero Hartley and her search for the "Mountains of Stone" location? Through the lens of the murder that took place there in the 90s ( I think). Maybe it was early, early 2000s. Through the lens of the unique environmental features and conservation? The lens of historical events and figures associated with the area? At the end of this book, I have no idea.
I mean, really, I have no idea what this book was actually supposed to be about. What I'm left with is that it's kind of the ramblings of a woman who had an interest in a place because of her art hero and then was incredibly self-indulgent in writing about too many things in general because she didn't really have enough of any one of them to make her little project work.
Sorry. Not sorry, Elyssa East.
* True Crime Elements
* Well-known "witchy" location
* Location I'm familiar with
* Historical timelines
* Nature-y stuff
Yeah. Nope.
This book attempted to document the Dogtown area of Cape Ann/Gloucester through the lens of...
And that's the problem. Elyssa East seems to have had no idea what the point of her book was. Through the lens of her art hero Hartley and her search for the "Mountains of Stone" location? Through the lens of the murder that took place there in the 90s ( I think). Maybe it was early, early 2000s. Through the lens of the unique environmental features and conservation? The lens of historical events and figures associated with the area? At the end of this book, I have no idea.
I mean, really, I have no idea what this book was actually supposed to be about. What I'm left with is that it's kind of the ramblings of a woman who had an interest in a place because of her art hero and then was incredibly self-indulgent in writing about too many things in general because she didn't really have enough of any one of them to make her little project work.
Sorry. Not sorry, Elyssa East.
November 3, 2018
I got this book thinking it was going to be about a murder but it focuses more on the town that the murder happened in than the actual murder. The book goes back and forth between the murder and the history of the town. I would have liked it better if it would have been about one or the other, but I failed to see how the two tied together. The murder itself would not have been enough to make a full-length book I dont think. I found it lacking on personal and background information on the subjects, however there is more about the murderer, but sadly, not very much about the victim and didnt give me enough information for me to feel like I knew her. Dogtown is actually a wooded area in Gloucester, Massachusetts, so if you are familiar with this area you might enjoy reading the history, but otherwise, I would skip it.
April 24, 2014
I bought this in my local independent book store on a Monday. I already knew I was going to Gloucester that evening. We had dinner at the Causeway which is the most amazing townie, BYOB place where you get more food/fish than you can possibly eat at one sitting for a good price. We dined with a couple and their near two year old who are good friends, after which, we went to Tony's recording studio so my guy and he could rehearse a couple of songs. After that, we went to the Monday night jam at the Rhumb Line, a nice cozy bar in downtown Gloucester, populated by young dancing girls in mini skirts, a plethora of talented musicians, and grizzled old timers, my kind of place. Right out of the gate, East states that her initial fascination came though Marsden Hartley's paintings of Dogtown. Marsden Hartley is in my top 3 American painters, I cannot put them in order, but they would include, well, ok 4 American painters....Hartley, Hopper, Walt Kuhn and Thomas Hart Benton. One reviewer called Hartley a second string painter...you can't see me, but I'm sticking my tongue out at him. Actually, I don't particularly care for his German stuff, but his Gloucester work, his Maine Katahdin work and his still life's speak to me....so, in view of East being attracted to Dogtown by Hartley's paintings, and my own increasing attraction to Gloucester, I knew that I couldn't go far wrong with this book. I have decided that when we lose our well below market value apartment in Somerville, I want to move to Gloucester. This has much to do with my love of the sea, and I confess that I am a Cape Cod girl since childhood, spending summers in a huge cottage on Lewis Bay built by my great grandfather, I still think I'd prefer to go to the North shore. Also, there has been a mass exodus of Boston musicians and artistic types, who have moved, quite happily to Gloucester, so I would know people right off the bat. While there are foofy sections of Gloucester, it's still working class, and so I think am I.
Beyond Hartley's paintings, I knew of Dogtown itself through my friend Willie Alexander, who did a great CD putting Vincent Ferrini's poetry to music, recorded at our friend Tony's Bang a Song studio. I think though, it goes way back to when I ran a film festival and one of Willie and Henry Ferrini, Vincent's nephew had a film in the festival, taking first prize. That was way back.
One of the other things that struck me early on in the book was the fact that the Laurentian Ice sheet, which deposited the huge boulders in Dogtown, actually came down from Jackman Maine which is where I have summered in a turn of the century log cabin with no running water or electricity, on Long Pond for the last 23 years. How weird is that?
The murder part creeped me out. For me it reminded me of my old hitch hiking days, and some bad things that happened, and how every now and then it would dawn on me when I was far far away from home and friends, that anything could happen to me between where I was which may be as far away as Salt Lake City, or as near as the next town over, and there was every possibility that no one would ever find me. Perhaps foolishly, I felt like it was riding a horse, and if I let the bad things scare me, I'd be afraid to walk out of my own front door, and I got right back out there.
And then there's the fact that Peter Hodgkins was sent to Bridgewater for psychiatric tests. I grew up in West Bridgewater. I lived there when Albert DeSalvo escaped, which felt like a pressure drop before a hurricane, and my mother told me, if anyone came to the house, I was supposed to go upstairs, throw the kids out the window, and she'd call the police. One can only hope she meant her bedroom window which would deposit my little sisters on the roof of the front porch! Also, When I was on the student Government Exchange, which brought kids from a city to our small town, and us to their city....we took them on tours of Bridgewater (Correctional facility for the criminally insane) Oh fun...Actually, there was this one really fascinating cell, which was a cell that the inmate had painting floor to ceiling in psychedelic paintings, which were really cool.
Anyway, all these things made the book an interesting read for me. I had no problem with Elyssa East going back and forth in time, I enjoyed reading about Dogtown's history. I have no problem getting the pall that hung over the town in regards to how the residents related to Anne Natti's murder in Dogtown. I did live in P Town and remember when a shrimp boat was lost with all it's crew and it was just so thick the pall that hung over the town for such a long time. And while Gloucester knows more than well, that it may lose ships and has, a murder like this is a whole other ball game to deal with and put into perspective. It also makes me want to speak to my sister who religiously walks her golden retrievers in the BB Woods of Falmouth, now I'll worry about her.
Beyond Hartley's paintings, I knew of Dogtown itself through my friend Willie Alexander, who did a great CD putting Vincent Ferrini's poetry to music, recorded at our friend Tony's Bang a Song studio. I think though, it goes way back to when I ran a film festival and one of Willie and Henry Ferrini, Vincent's nephew had a film in the festival, taking first prize. That was way back.
One of the other things that struck me early on in the book was the fact that the Laurentian Ice sheet, which deposited the huge boulders in Dogtown, actually came down from Jackman Maine which is where I have summered in a turn of the century log cabin with no running water or electricity, on Long Pond for the last 23 years. How weird is that?
The murder part creeped me out. For me it reminded me of my old hitch hiking days, and some bad things that happened, and how every now and then it would dawn on me when I was far far away from home and friends, that anything could happen to me between where I was which may be as far away as Salt Lake City, or as near as the next town over, and there was every possibility that no one would ever find me. Perhaps foolishly, I felt like it was riding a horse, and if I let the bad things scare me, I'd be afraid to walk out of my own front door, and I got right back out there.
And then there's the fact that Peter Hodgkins was sent to Bridgewater for psychiatric tests. I grew up in West Bridgewater. I lived there when Albert DeSalvo escaped, which felt like a pressure drop before a hurricane, and my mother told me, if anyone came to the house, I was supposed to go upstairs, throw the kids out the window, and she'd call the police. One can only hope she meant her bedroom window which would deposit my little sisters on the roof of the front porch! Also, When I was on the student Government Exchange, which brought kids from a city to our small town, and us to their city....we took them on tours of Bridgewater (Correctional facility for the criminally insane) Oh fun...Actually, there was this one really fascinating cell, which was a cell that the inmate had painting floor to ceiling in psychedelic paintings, which were really cool.
Anyway, all these things made the book an interesting read for me. I had no problem with Elyssa East going back and forth in time, I enjoyed reading about Dogtown's history. I have no problem getting the pall that hung over the town in regards to how the residents related to Anne Natti's murder in Dogtown. I did live in P Town and remember when a shrimp boat was lost with all it's crew and it was just so thick the pall that hung over the town for such a long time. And while Gloucester knows more than well, that it may lose ships and has, a murder like this is a whole other ball game to deal with and put into perspective. It also makes me want to speak to my sister who religiously walks her golden retrievers in the BB Woods of Falmouth, now I'll worry about her.
March 17, 2022
Living in Gloucester, on the edge of Dogtown, I am always interested in learning more about the early settlement there. The author masterfully weaves historical information regarding Gloucester with the details of a grisly murder committed in Dogtown in 1984. The murder details were shockingly descriptive and disturbing but made me want to know who was capable of such a crime and what became of the killer. The author shares an interest in Dogtown with many people, including artists, poets and other authors. The large wilderness "park" takes up a huge part of the island that Gloucester and Rockport share. It has many moods and talks to folks in different ways. There are very few places where woodlands of this size remain in a natural state, with no interference from government agencies.
Elyssa East spent ten years researching material for this work and interviewing local people. Her attention to detail is exemplary. It is a fascinating book!
Elyssa East spent ten years researching material for this work and interviewing local people. Her attention to detail is exemplary. It is a fascinating book!
June 5, 2015
East does a masterful job of weaving together
--her fascination with artst Marsden Hartley's eerie landscapes and writings about an isolated New England locale,
--the bump-in-the-night history of that ghost town from its puritan, piratical, and political roots, and
--the true-life crime horror of the brutal 1984 murder in Dogtown, this isolated New England ghost town just behind the touristic and gentrifying coast town of Gloucester and minutes from Boston by train or Route 128.
East keeps the interest, intrigue, and action moving forward apace, never showing too much of her hand and never committing the fatal mistake of injecting artificial fog into her landscape to keep the reader mystified but feeling cheated at the end. Indeed, the story East has to tell seems "almost too good" to screw up--which adds to the reader's appreciation that she didn't!
Dogtown (East devotes a couple interesting pages to the origin and use of the place name here and elsewhere) is on Cape Ann, the northern "jaw" of Cape Cod, and just about 30 miles northeast of Boston. It is an isolated tract of land characterized by glacial moraines that left huge granite boulders strewn in monumental spills over once hardwood-draped hills that were stripped for the shipping yards on the coast years ago, but began to be reforested (naturally and artificially) in the 20th century. The locale seemed to always attract trouble of both the earthly (political and religious battles in the town helped seal its fate) and otherworldly; things just seemed to happen there, like phantom French and Indians in the 17th century, pirates in the 18th century, mystical and artistic vibes in the 19th and 20th--
and that horrific murder in 1984.. East moves each of the components of the story forward, motivated first by her artistic attraction to Hartley, but finally driven by the story of the murder and its impact on the locale, the locals (including both victim and criminal) who have called the place home for centuries, and the tourists and newcomers who invade each summer season. It is a wise choice, as East does a masterful job at unfolding that tale at just the right pace. Horror fans might find the New England setting and story a true-life version of a Steven King tale. Art history buffs will enjoy the references to Hartley and other artists and poets who frequented Cape Ann.
But mostly, good writing tells no matter the locale or genre, so fans of good writing will enjoy this tale well told
--her fascination with artst Marsden Hartley's eerie landscapes and writings about an isolated New England locale,
--the bump-in-the-night history of that ghost town from its puritan, piratical, and political roots, and
--the true-life crime horror of the brutal 1984 murder in Dogtown, this isolated New England ghost town just behind the touristic and gentrifying coast town of Gloucester and minutes from Boston by train or Route 128.
East keeps the interest, intrigue, and action moving forward apace, never showing too much of her hand and never committing the fatal mistake of injecting artificial fog into her landscape to keep the reader mystified but feeling cheated at the end. Indeed, the story East has to tell seems "almost too good" to screw up--which adds to the reader's appreciation that she didn't!
Dogtown (East devotes a couple interesting pages to the origin and use of the place name here and elsewhere) is on Cape Ann, the northern "jaw" of Cape Cod, and just about 30 miles northeast of Boston. It is an isolated tract of land characterized by glacial moraines that left huge granite boulders strewn in monumental spills over once hardwood-draped hills that were stripped for the shipping yards on the coast years ago, but began to be reforested (naturally and artificially) in the 20th century. The locale seemed to always attract trouble of both the earthly (political and religious battles in the town helped seal its fate) and otherworldly; things just seemed to happen there, like phantom French and Indians in the 17th century, pirates in the 18th century, mystical and artistic vibes in the 19th and 20th--
and that horrific murder in 1984.. East moves each of the components of the story forward, motivated first by her artistic attraction to Hartley, but finally driven by the story of the murder and its impact on the locale, the locals (including both victim and criminal) who have called the place home for centuries, and the tourists and newcomers who invade each summer season. It is a wise choice, as East does a masterful job at unfolding that tale at just the right pace. Horror fans might find the New England setting and story a true-life version of a Steven King tale. Art history buffs will enjoy the references to Hartley and other artists and poets who frequented Cape Ann.
But mostly, good writing tells no matter the locale or genre, so fans of good writing will enjoy this tale well told
January 19, 2013
ISBN 1416587047 - I chose to read this one for several reasons. Love ghost towns! My grandmother was infatuated with Gloucester. Dogtown? Sounds like my kind of place! Enchantment? Cool!
Dogtown has many stories. In recent history, there was the murder of a local woman. Long ago, there were tales of witches. Both of those stories, along with others, are woven into this book as author Elyssa East ventures into this abandoned area, now largely reclaimed by nature, in her search for the Dogtown of artist Marsden Hartley.
I struggled to stay focused at times. The place sounds fascinating and the stories ARE interesting. The trouble is that, in order to really get a feel for Dogtown, I was forced to turn to the internet. This is the sort of book that you just KNOW will have images - some of Hartley's Dogtown paintings, photos of the area, something. And you'd be wrong, sadly. For me, having to turn to an outside source became a great distraction because the internet has more information than East, or anyone, could ever fit into one book. I spent more time online than I did reading the book; the author could have trapped me by simply including what any reasonable person will want to see.
On top of that, there really are too many stories in this book to make it easy to latch onto one of them. East's personal tale grows out of her interest in Hartley's work, whose story is also here. The histories and some stories of locals she meets along the way add to the feeling that East tried to fit too many stories into one book. I enjoyed reading it, but it ended up simply being an introduction to a topic that I learned more about elsewhere. It's well-written. It just seems, in covering everything, to lack real clarity. And pictures. Yes, I know I'm repeating myself.
- AnnaLovesBooks
Dogtown has many stories. In recent history, there was the murder of a local woman. Long ago, there were tales of witches. Both of those stories, along with others, are woven into this book as author Elyssa East ventures into this abandoned area, now largely reclaimed by nature, in her search for the Dogtown of artist Marsden Hartley.
I struggled to stay focused at times. The place sounds fascinating and the stories ARE interesting. The trouble is that, in order to really get a feel for Dogtown, I was forced to turn to the internet. This is the sort of book that you just KNOW will have images - some of Hartley's Dogtown paintings, photos of the area, something. And you'd be wrong, sadly. For me, having to turn to an outside source became a great distraction because the internet has more information than East, or anyone, could ever fit into one book. I spent more time online than I did reading the book; the author could have trapped me by simply including what any reasonable person will want to see.
On top of that, there really are too many stories in this book to make it easy to latch onto one of them. East's personal tale grows out of her interest in Hartley's work, whose story is also here. The histories and some stories of locals she meets along the way add to the feeling that East tried to fit too many stories into one book. I enjoyed reading it, but it ended up simply being an introduction to a topic that I learned more about elsewhere. It's well-written. It just seems, in covering everything, to lack real clarity. And pictures. Yes, I know I'm repeating myself.
- AnnaLovesBooks
May 22, 2017
East gives the history of a now-abandoned wilderness on the coast of New England called Dogtown. In alternating chapters, she describes a murder trial from the 1980s and the evolution of this wilderness from the 1600s through the present.
Dogtown has inspired painters and writers and madmen, and has seen its fair share of infamy, from pirates to witches to murderers. It's an interesting area, but the author doesn't quite do it justice. The true crime sections are, sadly, kind of boring, as these stories are all-too-common and this one didn't have any particular twists to make it more intriguing. The sections about the history of Dogtown are mostly about the author's trips to the area, which she made to recover from various personal events. And while the evolution of the area might be interesting in another's hands, here it was also kind of boring. She jumps around between different time periods, and the use of alternating chapters is distracting. It might have been better to shorten the murder trial to just one section in the long history of Dogtown and keep everything else chronological.
In any case, I don't know that I learned anything particularly new, and it took me forever to finish because I kept putting it down. Two stars.
Dogtown has inspired painters and writers and madmen, and has seen its fair share of infamy, from pirates to witches to murderers. It's an interesting area, but the author doesn't quite do it justice. The true crime sections are, sadly, kind of boring, as these stories are all-too-common and this one didn't have any particular twists to make it more intriguing. The sections about the history of Dogtown are mostly about the author's trips to the area, which she made to recover from various personal events. And while the evolution of the area might be interesting in another's hands, here it was also kind of boring. She jumps around between different time periods, and the use of alternating chapters is distracting. It might have been better to shorten the murder trial to just one section in the long history of Dogtown and keep everything else chronological.
In any case, I don't know that I learned anything particularly new, and it took me forever to finish because I kept putting it down. Two stars.
March 12, 2010
A strange history of a strange place. Dogtown is an isolated spot of land, completely surrounded by Gloucester and Rockport. East does an excellent job of describing the eeriness that is present when you walk through the woods of Dogtown. She also does an excellent job chronicling the history of the place and Gloucester itself.
The book is basically divided into three areas - the history of Gloucester and Dogtown; the murder and subsequent trial for Anne Natti; and East's search for herself in Dogtown through the paitings of Marsden Hartly.
East, as Joyce Carol Oats stated in her review, fades away from the book early on and this is less memoir and more history (which I enjoyed). The brutal murder of Anne Natti is interwoven with the East's descriptions of the changing nature of Dogtown as a place and we are introduced to many of Gloucester's residents and their cultural backgrounds.
Really a fascinating place and one that has impacted so many people. I would highly recommend for anyone in and around the Greater Boston area, not only to read the book but to visit the place.
The book is basically divided into three areas - the history of Gloucester and Dogtown; the murder and subsequent trial for Anne Natti; and East's search for herself in Dogtown through the paitings of Marsden Hartly.
East, as Joyce Carol Oats stated in her review, fades away from the book early on and this is less memoir and more history (which I enjoyed). The brutal murder of Anne Natti is interwoven with the East's descriptions of the changing nature of Dogtown as a place and we are introduced to many of Gloucester's residents and their cultural backgrounds.
Really a fascinating place and one that has impacted so many people. I would highly recommend for anyone in and around the Greater Boston area, not only to read the book but to visit the place.
January 7, 2010
I totally enjoyed this book. This book is creepy. I have to admit, there was a point I put this book down, and I didn't return to it for a solid week it creeped me out so bad. This was an extremely graphic description of a murder - the writing was so clear and vivid I felt I'd watched it.
I'd never heard of Dogtown before, and I think I'll skip if I ever get a chance to visit. This is a very talented writer, the language is beautifully crafted, the insight is solid, and the combined effect, for me, was to PUT me in Dogtown. I could feel the cold creep of the damp soil, the wet edge of the rocks.
It's a work of nonfiction, with the author weaving together her love of an artist that found his inspiration in Dogtown, along with the folklore, the stories and personalities of the locals, and her visits.
I definitely look forward to reading anything else she writes. She's got serious talent.
I'd never heard of Dogtown before, and I think I'll skip if I ever get a chance to visit. This is a very talented writer, the language is beautifully crafted, the insight is solid, and the combined effect, for me, was to PUT me in Dogtown. I could feel the cold creep of the damp soil, the wet edge of the rocks.
It's a work of nonfiction, with the author weaving together her love of an artist that found his inspiration in Dogtown, along with the folklore, the stories and personalities of the locals, and her visits.
I definitely look forward to reading anything else she writes. She's got serious talent.
January 7, 2020
There is nothing on the back cover to indicate that a large portion of this book is devoted to the author's obsession with Marsden Hartley's paintings of the Dogtown boulders. Really, the author went to Dogtown to learn more about the paintings and search for the locations of the boulders and in this search, stumbled upon a brutal killing that happened in the woods.
If you're expecting an in-depth look at a senseless murder, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a history of strange corner of Massachusetts, some art and literature lessons and a few chapters about the murder, then you are in the right place. I think the info provided on the book jacket is misleading.
The book is mercifully short. Despite claiming ten years of research, I don't think the author learned a whole lot about any of the three subjects she explores. There are pages of seemingly unrelated interjections from the author's life. It just feels like lots of filler with little substance.
If you're expecting an in-depth look at a senseless murder, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a history of strange corner of Massachusetts, some art and literature lessons and a few chapters about the murder, then you are in the right place. I think the info provided on the book jacket is misleading.
The book is mercifully short. Despite claiming ten years of research, I don't think the author learned a whole lot about any of the three subjects she explores. There are pages of seemingly unrelated interjections from the author's life. It just feels like lots of filler with little substance.
July 23, 2012
Ok so I don't usually like non-fiction and this was no exception. I thought I'd take a chance and see what happened. Maybe I would like it? Um, no. It's not that the book wasn't interesting at times. It was. Especially the part about the murder of Anne Nati. I did like learning about Dogtown-Gloucester. However, some of the details were just too much and my mind easily wandered during my reading. If you like historical fiction about small towns and you are ready for the details, then this may be a good story for you. If not, then don't even bother. Some of the stories about Dogtown were all over the place and not related. I did like Elyssa East's writing style however. She does use captivating words. I think I will stick to fiction next time.
June 2, 2015
Very sensationalist book about Dogtown in Cape Ann, Massachusetts. There aren't all THAT many books about Dogtown, but this focused too much on a murder that happened out there in the 1980s. Honestly, I could careless about what happened in Dogtown in the 1980s. I want to know what was going on out there in the 1780s. Yes, the place is pretty eerie, especially when nobody else is around, but increasingly if you walk around in Dogtown you will stumble on some people having sex in the woods, not the ghosts of the 1780s.
April 8, 2010
Interesting book. Dogtown is an isolated wooded area in the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts that has attracted attention since colonial days. In this book, Elyssa East alternates the true story of a young woman in 1984 and the trial of her murderer with chapters describing the history of the area and the colorful characters (witches, pirates, runaway slaves, hobos, and destitute Revolutionary War widows) who have lived there.
January 4, 2010
True crime is not really my genre of choice, so I was less enthralled by the murder chapters, but I did enjoy the history and fascination of the place itself. Probably could've used more Lovecraft references, though.
August 8, 2010
I grew up on the fringes of DOGTOWN, and my friends and I played in the woods all the time ... This book captures both sides of the area ... its beauty and its terror in it depiction of the absolute horrible murder of Anne Natti ... Read it! It is, hands down, the best book I've read this year!
February 28, 2013
On the North Shore of Massachusetts, some 30 miles northeast of Boston, an oblong of land called Cape Ann projects into the Atlantic Ocean. The Agawam tribe, belonging to the Eastern Algonquian language group, occupied the area when Europeans began arriving. By 1617 three quarters of the Native Americans in Massachusetts had perished from a pestilence, probably European-delivered, against which they had no immunity. In 1623 when ships from the Dorchester Company, precursor to the Massachusetts Bay Company, began colonizing Cape Ann, the Agawams were so decimated they sought alliance with the colonizers, fearing regional enemies more than Puritans. They were, by the accounts I have found, absorbed into the colonizers' community and effectively disappeared. At any rate, there were no Cape Ann Agawams left to participate in King Philip's War come 1675.
Since this creepy beginning 400 years ago, (predominantly though not exclusively) white people have lived on the perimeter of this spit of land, sailing countless ships to and away from it. Cape Ann's most important industry for most of this time has been fishing. You know the old Gorton's Fish Sticks sailor logo? That's actually the image of a cenotaph erected in Gloucester on Cape Ann in the 1920s. It commemorates the many local fishermen who went to sea and never returned.
Early Modern travel is one of my pet historical interests. None of my reading in any area is exhaustive or authoritative...with the possible exception of classic horror fiction. So I know the impressions I am about to offer owe a lot to imagination. That said, the things I have read about seafaring in this broad time period - among them, Moby Dick, In the Heart of the Sea, Mr. Bligh's Bad Language - all depict the people who made their living on and from the sea, as well as the families they left at port, as a little bit haunted.*
Elyssa East's Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town has added vividness to this impression. Her non-fiction portrait of Cape Ann, and especially Gloucester, is clearly subjective, shaped by East's personal reasons for venturing to this corner of land and for deciding to root around in its past. You can tell by her title that she thinks the place is a little spooky. According to East, more than one resident does, too.
One of America's oldest English settlements, Gloucester, occupies the southwest portion of Cape Ann. Rockport and some other small towns also share coastal space along what residents call "the island". At the interior of the island lies a 2,000-some acre woodland known as Dogtown.
This enigmatic place is not a national or state park, a designated recreation area or anything else so familiar. Much of it, privately and publicly owned, is protected against development by some sort of conservation program. However, the ownership of large tracts of Dogtown's acreage remains obscure, lost to bad record keeping, fires, the kinds of things that can happen to a city's legal documents over 400 years of life. The extant records relating to Dogtown real estate do not help matters either. Surveyors created these documents so long ago that they demarcate plots by referencing landmarks that no longer exist, that have not existed for over 100 years.
Before its reclaiming by forest, Dogtown was a village. Over its 137-year history as a settlement (1693-1830), the place transitioned from the well-to-do Gloucester satellite known as the Commons Settlement, to Dogtown, a refuge for witches a.k.a. single women, people of color, the indigent; anybody at whom 19th-century New Englanders likely looked askance. As inland roads changed and Cape Ann's dynamic altered, Dogtown's homes fell into disrepair until finally, in 1830, the last resident of Dogtown, a freedmen named Cornelius Finson, fell ill and died.** Since then strange occurrences, sometimes upsetting ones, and weird stories have accrued to it. Its reputation as a place of surreal beauty has also blossomed.
Cape Ann has long fed the creativity of painters, poets and naturalists. East herself came to the island seeking the real-word subjects used by Marsden Hartley in his early-20th-century series of Dogtown paintings.
Dogtown, not only home to a ghost settlement, is a terminal moraine containing enormous boulders left over when the Laurentide Ice Sheet began retreating a little over ten thousand years ago. These boulders characterize the area for locals - and its sense of enchantedness, as East would have it - even more than the remains of the defunct Commons Settlement do. Moreover, Dogtown's peculiar situation as a public/private real estate hybrid, long untended by anyone in particular, means that its young woods actually feel incredibly dense and even oppressive. There are no markers, paths get washed away and reformed. Hikers and other adventurers get lost or easily turned around there. Stories evidently circulate among Cape Ann locals of people walking into Dogtown and never returning.
As a tract of unsupervised land, Dogtown attracts the homeless, teenagers looking to get drunk, self-proclaimed witches, hunters, hikers, really anyone in search of something they can't find in "normal" densely-populated and urban coastal Massachusetts. A few people have killed themselves in those woods. A couple of people have been killed, too. None of these incidences affected the residents of Cape Ann as much as Anne Natti's murder on a rainy day in 1984.
East has reconstructed the elements of the murder and its aftermath with an artist's dogged attention to detail. I will not report it here, except to observe that it gives new meaning to describing a crime as "senseless". It is not hard to comprehend why residents would be peculiarly jarred by Natti's death. But East's real accomplishment is having crafted a non-fiction book that reads lyrically, responsibly, sensitively while drifting across genre boundaries as though they did not exist; I suppose reminding us they only exist in our minds. In Dogtown, she has blended autobiography, biography, art history, colonial history, ghost stories, literary history and true crime, and she has done it admirably.
Incidentally, if you read this book and liked it, or are at all interested, check out the interesting fiction work Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant.
*I lived for a good while in New Orleans and am sensitive to the obnoxiousness of "horror" tourism and the romanticization of painful or troubled histories. And yet I suppose I am participating a little in that here.
**He did not die before being discovered in his illness and taken from his home in Dogtown to Gloucester's poor house by his "helpful" townie neighbors. Thanks, friends.
Since this creepy beginning 400 years ago, (predominantly though not exclusively) white people have lived on the perimeter of this spit of land, sailing countless ships to and away from it. Cape Ann's most important industry for most of this time has been fishing. You know the old Gorton's Fish Sticks sailor logo? That's actually the image of a cenotaph erected in Gloucester on Cape Ann in the 1920s. It commemorates the many local fishermen who went to sea and never returned.
Early Modern travel is one of my pet historical interests. None of my reading in any area is exhaustive or authoritative...with the possible exception of classic horror fiction. So I know the impressions I am about to offer owe a lot to imagination. That said, the things I have read about seafaring in this broad time period - among them, Moby Dick, In the Heart of the Sea, Mr. Bligh's Bad Language - all depict the people who made their living on and from the sea, as well as the families they left at port, as a little bit haunted.*
Elyssa East's Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town has added vividness to this impression. Her non-fiction portrait of Cape Ann, and especially Gloucester, is clearly subjective, shaped by East's personal reasons for venturing to this corner of land and for deciding to root around in its past. You can tell by her title that she thinks the place is a little spooky. According to East, more than one resident does, too.
One of America's oldest English settlements, Gloucester, occupies the southwest portion of Cape Ann. Rockport and some other small towns also share coastal space along what residents call "the island". At the interior of the island lies a 2,000-some acre woodland known as Dogtown.
This enigmatic place is not a national or state park, a designated recreation area or anything else so familiar. Much of it, privately and publicly owned, is protected against development by some sort of conservation program. However, the ownership of large tracts of Dogtown's acreage remains obscure, lost to bad record keeping, fires, the kinds of things that can happen to a city's legal documents over 400 years of life. The extant records relating to Dogtown real estate do not help matters either. Surveyors created these documents so long ago that they demarcate plots by referencing landmarks that no longer exist, that have not existed for over 100 years.
Before its reclaiming by forest, Dogtown was a village. Over its 137-year history as a settlement (1693-1830), the place transitioned from the well-to-do Gloucester satellite known as the Commons Settlement, to Dogtown, a refuge for witches a.k.a. single women, people of color, the indigent; anybody at whom 19th-century New Englanders likely looked askance. As inland roads changed and Cape Ann's dynamic altered, Dogtown's homes fell into disrepair until finally, in 1830, the last resident of Dogtown, a freedmen named Cornelius Finson, fell ill and died.** Since then strange occurrences, sometimes upsetting ones, and weird stories have accrued to it. Its reputation as a place of surreal beauty has also blossomed.
Cape Ann has long fed the creativity of painters, poets and naturalists. East herself came to the island seeking the real-word subjects used by Marsden Hartley in his early-20th-century series of Dogtown paintings.
Dogtown, not only home to a ghost settlement, is a terminal moraine containing enormous boulders left over when the Laurentide Ice Sheet began retreating a little over ten thousand years ago. These boulders characterize the area for locals - and its sense of enchantedness, as East would have it - even more than the remains of the defunct Commons Settlement do. Moreover, Dogtown's peculiar situation as a public/private real estate hybrid, long untended by anyone in particular, means that its young woods actually feel incredibly dense and even oppressive. There are no markers, paths get washed away and reformed. Hikers and other adventurers get lost or easily turned around there. Stories evidently circulate among Cape Ann locals of people walking into Dogtown and never returning.
As a tract of unsupervised land, Dogtown attracts the homeless, teenagers looking to get drunk, self-proclaimed witches, hunters, hikers, really anyone in search of something they can't find in "normal" densely-populated and urban coastal Massachusetts. A few people have killed themselves in those woods. A couple of people have been killed, too. None of these incidences affected the residents of Cape Ann as much as Anne Natti's murder on a rainy day in 1984.
East has reconstructed the elements of the murder and its aftermath with an artist's dogged attention to detail. I will not report it here, except to observe that it gives new meaning to describing a crime as "senseless". It is not hard to comprehend why residents would be peculiarly jarred by Natti's death. But East's real accomplishment is having crafted a non-fiction book that reads lyrically, responsibly, sensitively while drifting across genre boundaries as though they did not exist; I suppose reminding us they only exist in our minds. In Dogtown, she has blended autobiography, biography, art history, colonial history, ghost stories, literary history and true crime, and she has done it admirably.
Incidentally, if you read this book and liked it, or are at all interested, check out the interesting fiction work Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant.
*I lived for a good while in New Orleans and am sensitive to the obnoxiousness of "horror" tourism and the romanticization of painful or troubled histories. And yet I suppose I am participating a little in that here.
**He did not die before being discovered in his illness and taken from his home in Dogtown to Gloucester's poor house by his "helpful" townie neighbors. Thanks, friends.
April 1, 2020
Dogtown: Death and Enchantment is close to me, literally - I live on the edge of Dogtown on Cape Ann and the murder victim is a member of the extended family, so I may not be entirely objective. That said....this is a terrific book. There are two main characters: the murderer and Dogtown itself. Where Elyssa East shines is in trying to get at the elusive character of a wild, abandoned yet treasured piece of earth in the center of Cape Ann. Dogtown has inspired artists, attracted the occult, accepted society's outcasts, nurtured its one of-a-kind characters. It anchors an important piece of Gloucester's identity. East gets it and the way she chronicles her search helps the reader understand more about this fascinating part of the world and its history. She initially travels to Dogtown to find the site of a painting by Marsden Hartley and her very first venture into the interior of Cape Ann leaves her unsettled. When she returns for more research, she finds a dark undercurrent that keeps rising in interviews with people, with the murder referenced over and over again, even though it had taken place almost 20 years earlier. She finds herself more and more drawn into the mystery and oddity of this place and finds herself going in directions she hadn't expected. I need to say that there are a few factual errors that won't bother most people and don't effect the truth of the overall story. This is a crime story, but even more, the portrait of a place.
May 22, 2022
I read many reviews of this book, many of them negative. I found Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town to be compelling. Ms. East was telling many stories, each of which were interesting to me. I found her transitions to be easy to follow because she finished apiece of each story and started a new chapter moving the story forward. I always feel that the author has the write to tell the story as they chose.
I lived on Cape Ann from 1971-1991 and returned in 2015. I was aware of the murder in Dogtown. It was scary, but I was in my twenties, and I was in my own little world. Reading this book, has made me aware how little I knew about what was going on around me.
Cape Ann is a unique place; in my opinion it is not just Dogtown, but the island that is unusual. People come here and feel a vibe, a difference in the people, the quality of the air, the beauty. I think that many people find that it sparks their creativity.
I thank Ms. East for writing this book, which like everything, everywhere has some bad and some good. She has sparked my curiosity of the place I call home.
I lived on Cape Ann from 1971-1991 and returned in 2015. I was aware of the murder in Dogtown. It was scary, but I was in my twenties, and I was in my own little world. Reading this book, has made me aware how little I knew about what was going on around me.
Cape Ann is a unique place; in my opinion it is not just Dogtown, but the island that is unusual. People come here and feel a vibe, a difference in the people, the quality of the air, the beauty. I think that many people find that it sparks their creativity.
I thank Ms. East for writing this book, which like everything, everywhere has some bad and some good. She has sparked my curiosity of the place I call home.
July 25, 2023
Since I live near Gloucester, and have visited the historic town to enjoy its beaches and restaurants, I was intrigued when I came upon this book while wandering my public library shelves. I had heard of Dogtown, and its peculiarities, and had often thought it might be nice to do a day hike there. I thought it might be light read about the Dogtown's history and quirkiness. And it did, indeed, do this, but in an unexpected format and information. I didn't realize it would focus on a local murder that happened about 15 years before East wrote the book.
Sometimes, rarely, that got in the way of the other story the author was telling, and the reason she'd first showed up at Dogtown, namely to explore how it had affected the painter Marsden Hartley, and how she hoped it would help her come to grips with some personal issues.
But neither wind up getting in the way of her description of a compelling place that seems to leave many people deeply touched. She does this through her gift for describing places and scenes in vivid prose that leaves the reader with an ache to experience this place personally, and probably repeatedly.
Sometimes, rarely, that got in the way of the other story the author was telling, and the reason she'd first showed up at Dogtown, namely to explore how it had affected the painter Marsden Hartley, and how she hoped it would help her come to grips with some personal issues.
But neither wind up getting in the way of her description of a compelling place that seems to leave many people deeply touched. She does this through her gift for describing places and scenes in vivid prose that leaves the reader with an ache to experience this place personally, and probably repeatedly.
January 8, 2025
I was surprised by the amount of negative reviews. I enjoyed this book overall - the writing itself was well done, descriptive, and interesting. I wasn't expecting it to focus so much on the murder of Anne. I don't enjoy true crime books so it threw me off a little bit. I also didn't expect to read so much about Hartley, the painter she admired - however, I also realize this artist was her motivation to going to Dogtown in the first place.
I think the mythical, creepy vibe is most caught in the early American history. That's what I was expecting to read more about. I think if that theme really *stuck* throughout the book it would have felt more cohesive, which is what other readers struggled with. However, if you really want to deep dive, Dogtown also seems to lack direction, cohesion, and reason...so the fact that the author didn't have a focal point was almost fitting. Dogtown constantly contradicted itself, you both wanted to visit and wanted to avoid it...a very interesting push and pull.
When it came down it, I just wanted witchier vibes. But overall, it definitely got me interested in the area but a bit too creeped out to actually visit!
I think the mythical, creepy vibe is most caught in the early American history. That's what I was expecting to read more about. I think if that theme really *stuck* throughout the book it would have felt more cohesive, which is what other readers struggled with. However, if you really want to deep dive, Dogtown also seems to lack direction, cohesion, and reason...so the fact that the author didn't have a focal point was almost fitting. Dogtown constantly contradicted itself, you both wanted to visit and wanted to avoid it...a very interesting push and pull.
When it came down it, I just wanted witchier vibes. But overall, it definitely got me interested in the area but a bit too creeped out to actually visit!
May 15, 2020
This book brings to light a forgotten place that has a cursed and rich history of colonial New England. The book alternates between a grisly murder in 1984 of a resident and historical accounts of how Dogtown came into existence, was a real settlement, became a haven for widows, outcasts and witches and was ultimately abandoned. There is much lore and bad luck associated with Dogtown but it was also the inspiration for a famous modernist painter, Marsden Hartley, as well as the founder of Babson College, Roger Babson. This is a good read if you are interested in taking a hike or bike ride through Dogtown and to have context of the rich history it possesses. There is an ominous and haunting feel to what Dogtown is/was but it also sparks the imagination of something otherworldly since it somehow has managed to keep its 3,600 acres in a natural state while Gloucester and Rockport infrastructure surrounds it.
December 20, 2017
I wanted to like this book more than I did . . . I thought it would be more about the history of Dogtown, but instead the focus was on a murder that happened in the Dogtown woods back in 1984. I am not one who enjoys reading murder mysteries, fictional or non-fictional. I feel like this book tainted my view about Dogtown in an irredeemable way. However, I now have all 24 inscriptions by Babson and we plan on going there this summer to find them all, including the Dream of Love rock that the author also mentions, created by someone else. I did enjoy the tidbits of history that were in the book, and the local characters on Cape Ann that helped the author with her book as well as the artists who found Dogtown mysterious and inspiring. But I could have done without the whole murder drama part . . .
January 17, 2023
Dogtown is located in Gloucester, Massachusetts and has a long history of violence and death. If you are looking for a history book about the area events, then this is a book for you. If you are looking to read the true crime story that happened in June of 1984, the death of Anne Natti, then skip this book. It is in there hidden by intermissions of history lessons, trying to tie current events to past events, trying to be spooky and unnecessary details. If that does not concern you then be prepared to be ready a straightforward dry read. Why did I finish if I disliked it so much? I did learn some things and I did like the history. I just wish the book would have focused on either the history or the True Crime story, both got lost in the book. I am still giving it two stars.
September 22, 2017
Really interesting read, overall. East successfully interweaves the local history and geology of the Cape Ann peninsula with a detailed analysis of the impact of a crime that devastated the local community back in the '80s.
Along the way she shares anecdotes about her personal connection to the area, but never too the extent of overshadowing the greater purpose of the book.
I am reasonably familiar with the area and love New England historical lore, so am admittedly biased, but would recommend "Dogtown" to anyone who appreciates a well-researched historical narrative. I will definitely be on the lookout for further books from East.
Along the way she shares anecdotes about her personal connection to the area, but never too the extent of overshadowing the greater purpose of the book.
I am reasonably familiar with the area and love New England historical lore, so am admittedly biased, but would recommend "Dogtown" to anyone who appreciates a well-researched historical narrative. I will definitely be on the lookout for further books from East.
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