Bootleggers, Lobstermen & Lumberjacks: Fifty Of The Grittiest Moments In The History Of Hardscrabble New England

by Matthew P. Mayo

Bootleggers, Lobstermen, and Lumberjacks! The story of New England is built on an endless armature of fascinating stories of Yankee ingenuity and hardy, intrepid characters. Bootleggers, Lobstermen, and Lumberjacks presents the top 50 wildest episodes in the region's history in one convenient, narrative-driven package.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Unfinished, Historical

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Matthew P. Mayo is the award-winning author of thirty-plus books and dozens more short stories. His novel, Stranded: A Story of Frontier Survival, won the prestigious Western Heritage Wrangler Award for Outstanding Western Novel by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, as well as the Spur Award for Best Western Juvenile Fiction by the Western Writers of America, the Peacemaker Award for Best YA Novel by Western Fictioneers, and the Willa Literary Award for Best Historical Fiction by Women Writing the West. His novel, Tucker’s Reckoning, won the Spur Award for Best Western Novel, and his short stories have been Spur Award and Peacemaker Award finalists.

He has been an on-screen expert for a popular TV series about lost treasure in the American West, and is an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.

Matthew and his wife, photographer and videographer Jennifer Smith-Mayo, along with their indefatigable pup, Miss Tess, run Gritty Press (www.GrittyPress.com) and live in the deepest, forested wildlands of Maine. When they’re not battling belligerent bigfoots and foiling the filching ways of hordes of gray squirrels, they rove the byways of North America in search of hot coffee, tasty whiskey, and high adventure. Be sure to rummage at Matthew’s website (www.MatthewMayo.com) for updates about spurious projects, outrageous outings, and a few surprises, too….

Reviews

[Lauren Stoolfire · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a handful of interesting stories in this collection, but not enough to make it worth finishing. I'm glad there was little preview of each story at the head of each chapter.

[Joel Altre-Kerber · Rating 3 out of 5]

We are a Nation of lists. We buy magazines that will tell us the 10 Best Ways to Lose Weight, 25 Things That Will Kill Your Dating Prospects, and 73 Ways to Improve Your Kitchen.

This book lures you in with the same promise of Booze, Fish and Wood and 50 Big Stories. I'm happy to say that the stories win out, but many of the stories are less sensational, but more moving, than the title suggests.

The 50 Stories are presented chronologically from the 17th Century until the not-so-distant past, and only nominally follows the title's themes. We meet scalpings, witch hunts, ship wrecks, murders, duplicity, and happenstance. They are related in part in first person/present tense, which makes the reading fast and compelling. Each chapter is, on average, only 4 pages, so it reads episodically, like a ½ hour TV show. It is well tailored for our short attention span minds.

Interesting as these stories are, it is missing thread to bring the stories together. The title's themes only occupy the last 50 pages of the book. A lovely series of fictionalized stories, but at the end, nothing is really learned.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is New England history as a 12 year old boy would tell it. It's a disjointed series of unrelated historical episodes of only the most lurid sort. The author also embellishes the facts with descriptions of how the victim of a fatal shark attack hugged his blood-spurting arm stump to his chest before the shark rose up out of the water a final time and swallowed him. No one was there with this shark attack victim, so it's clearly embellishment, and just comes across as cheesy.
I would say this book would only appeal to the slice of the population with the most base interests and shortest attention spans, but this summer I watched a bit of cable tv while on vacation with my parents, and based on what's in their lineup, this book will probably appeal to all viewers of cable television.

[Rykki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has an amazing variety of stories, some I was familiar with after having grown up in New England, and others were new. I read this with my kids, ages 14, 11, and 9, which I would only recommend if your kids aren't squeamish. While the stories aren't incredibly graphic, they can be a little scary and some of them are a bit intense.

I will say, some of these stories are just heartbreaking. There were some incredibly sad stories here, and it really does help give you appreciation for everything we have in life. Modern convenience has made New England a lot more bearable. Things like more accurate weather prediction, storm tracking, and all of that make it easier to survive here. It gives me a whole lot of respect for the people who built their lives here and founded this region. It couldn't have been easy.

This book brought a new light to stories I'd heard before and introduced so many new ones that I was glad I took the time to read it, and I think it was a fantastic decision to share with my kids. My youngest was the one to pick it out while we were at the history center, so we had to read it together. I'm definitely going to be passing this book on to a friend for a read because the stories are that good!

[Jay B · Rating 1 out of 5]

Would have been better if the stories were kept factual instead of making up dialogue in an attempt to make it more digestible. Telling the tale in first person and present tense takes a lot away from the information. Turns it into just another book of make believe that just happens to take place in New England.

Don’t get me wrong. I love fiction but that wasn’t what I was looking for when I got this book. I grew up just down the road from the Lost Colony and always enjoyed tales of coastal living. Dude lost me in the introduction and sealed it with the opening of the first story. Tried to push on through but had to give up.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ouch! For a book on murders, bootleggers, etc.. it was hard to get through.
The book is arranged chronologically, so stories covering some topics (colonists vs Native Americans, freezing winters, bootlegging, etc…) all occupy similar spots in the book. That’s fine but reading 3-4 short stories on the same/similar subject repeatedly gets tiresome.
The stories are also so bland. Example, the story of Lizzie Borden is 4-5 pages, 1/2-1 page is on the murders, the rest, I can’t recall. I had to read it over 2 nights as I couldn’t stay awake while reading it.
Good idea, just poorly executed

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of historic episodes, some more well known than others. If you hate winter, New England is not for you.

[Chuck · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing isn’t great, but it was an amusing collection of tales made better by the fact that I now know many of the places where these stories are set.

[Scott Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the stories about the pirates, rumrunners, and lobstermen. One too many stories about scalpings.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could of done without all the embellishments. Some of the stories were interesting but a good amount of the stories are common in New England.

[Liam J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting since my visit to New England, 50 stories of historical incidents, often focussed on the harsh climate. Told in a mix of straight facts and faction.

[Lauren Csaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book isn't really a continuous narrative but a series of 50 separate stories (albeit in chronological order) held together by a tenuous overarching theme of "hardscrabble New England." This format could have been more successful--indeed, many of the stories were quite interesting and provoked a desire to read more about the incidents and people described. But the book suffers from the author's decision to tell each story in two parts: the first half is written in a fiction voice, with invented dialogue and imagined inner thoughts for the characters. The second half switches to a non-fiction voice, fleshing out what ultimately happened to everyone and how the incident was resolved. The author is a good non-fiction writer, but disappointingly his fiction voice is cheesy and cloying. Plus, it's distracting to constantly wonder where the blur between truth and invention lies. The book would have been much better in a straight non-fiction voice. Recommended primarily as an inspiration or jumping-off point for further reading.

[Marlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter was very interesting and as a historian Mayo is spot on- I also very much like the idea of pairing historical accounts with fictional retellings, but I found many of the stories hard to take (and not for the grittiness) because of the cliche' dialogue, flat characters, and rushed pace. The stories try to pack a lot of information into 3-4 pages and sometimes that choice hinders more than helps. Still, a lot of interesting and more often than not gruesome moments here- a decent winter read sitting near the fire.

[Tim Ganotis · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a historical perspective the book is good, with lots of rich detail. The fictional accounts are a bit heavy-handed with wooden dialogue, and quite boring as a whole. The events depicted are generally somewhat horrific, from unending winters, to Indian scalpings, to drowning at sea, and even the prohibition of alcohol. Colonial-era New England (and even some 20th century) sounds like an awful time to exist.

[David Ward · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bootleggers, Lobstermen & Lumberjacks: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Hardscrabble New England by Matthew P. Mayo (Globe Pequot Press 2011) (974.0) is a collection of short articles compiled by the author. There have to be better stories "...in the History of Hardscrabble New England" than the five or so I sampled. My rating: 2/10, finished 5/17/13.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this one...but...meh. Wrong book, wrong time?

[Alyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent writing + Exciting stories= Winner. These stories, from the Mayflower to the 1950's, are so completely engaging that the only criticism is that there are too few of them.