10 books like Townie

You never forget your first. This was the first grown-up haunting book I ever read, and it was complete adoration at first sight. King’s work has had a huge influence on me as a writer. (Yes, when I get stuck, I do quite literally think, okay, what would Uncle Stevie do?) This novel has all the great King elements—realistic people trying to survive an insanely unreal situation; engrossing, detailed backstory that makes that situation feel like it’s always been there, waiting, watching, inevitable; snappy dialogue and unexpected jolts of humor. The Overlook Hotel is a perfect clockwork trap of unholy psychic evil that takes haunting to a whole new level. And of course, Danny is just cute as the dickens. No matter how many times I read this book, I fret for him all the way through. 

Though often viewed as a book about Jewish mothers, Roth’s controversial comic masterpiece is also a portrait of an ever-suffering father whose hopes and dreams are tied to his son. “Where he had been imprisoned, I would fly,” Roth writes in the voice of his narrator. Portnoy’s father is a put-upon insurance salesman wracked with constipation whose sacrifices instill a constant, nagging guilt in his son. Readers empathize with Portnoy’s efforts to escape his father’s overbearing influence, but also feel for the father, who simply wants the best for his intelligent, talented son. When my own father died, my first thought was that he had worked hard so that my life could be easier. A father sacrificing for his son is one of the hidden engines of this American classic.   

The Risk Pool shows the importance of accepting and loving our fathers for who they are instead of resenting them for who they never could be. Sam Hall, the irresponsible wreck of a dad in this warm-hearted and funny book, is by any definition a terrible father, yet his relationship with his son Ned feels real in ways that most fictionalized father-son relationships don’t. Forced to care for Ned when Ned’s mother is hospitalized with mental illness, Sam introduces his son to pool halls, bars, bookies, drunks, and the occasional petty crime. Though aware of his father’s many faults, Ned can’t help but be charmed by Sam’s easy-going life, and even when Sam disappears for years, the bond remains strong.  

The most loving father-son relationship I’ve ever read features Dr. Wilbur Larch and the orphan Homer Wells, who becomes the doctor’s apprentice before seeking a better life at an apple orchard in Maine.  Larch creates a fake heart ailment to keep Homer from World War 2, eventually conjuring an alternate identity to allow Homer to continue the doctor’s work caring for orphans and their mothers. But what if that life differs from what Homer wants? Irving’s novel shows how rifts between fathers and sons can exist without it diminishing the love and respect. Larch and Homer differ strongly in their beliefs on abortion, yet their bond is unbreakable. In a beautiful moment, both men gaze at their paired shadows on a hillside and wonder what their futures will bring.        

In 1845 Thoreau built a small cabin on land owned by his friend, the philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and conducted a two-year experiment in simple living. Walden is his account of this experiment. It's a hard book to summarize since, although quite short, it combines memoir, philosophical reflection, natural history, and social commentary. But it is beautifully written, and it has been an inspiration to countless readers who, like Thoreau, believe that we can deepen our experience of life by drawing closer to what is natural and elemental, reducing our dependency on things and, at least for a time, on other people. The book is required reading for anyone who delights in nature, is sympathetic to a philosophy of simple living, and who, like Thoreau, wishes "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."

Well, the title was amusing. The rest of the book was fascinating, alarming, and totally surprising for an author who was researching the lives of Puritans in early New England. The public records, Puritan laws, along with Thompson’s analysis opened up a world of new information and removed every myth I’d heard about these staunchly religious people.

James Deetz was an American anthropologist and his wife, a cultural historian. Their book was the result of studying Plymouth Colony court transcripts, wills, probate listings, and rare firsthand accounts, and then combining the facts with archeological evidence from various sites in Plymouth. This book shows a reality of the Pilgrims and Pilgrim life very different from the straight-laced, nearly mythical images from the 18th and 19th centuries: an all too human group who wore bright clothing, drank, believed in witches, had premarital sex and adulterous affairs, and committed petty and serious crimes. This book is informative and eye-opening.

This is a delightfully engaging book about Concord, Massachusetts, on the eve of the American Revolution. Robert Gross’ writing is a joy to read. It brings to life the ordinary townspeople who became revolutionaries. Gross shows how shifting demographics and social structures shaped the movement towards Independence. When the book first appeared it represented a fresh new approach to writing social history, and it justifiably won the Bancroft Prize.

When Caleb’s Crossing came out I couldn’t wait to read it. Not only was it written by one of my favorite authors, it was inspired by a true story and set in the same place and time period as the novel I was working on. Brooks’ depiction of the love between a Puritan minister’s daughter and the son of a Wampanoag leader is fraught with tension as two very different cultures collide. The novel brings to life the forces driving the conflict through the characters of Bethia and Caleb as they struggle to navigate a perilous time and the looming prospect of war.

If you want to learn about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, the most essential source is Mayflower passenger and longtime governor William Bradford’s own history. Bradford explains the circumstances that led a portion of his congregation to transplant themselves to the New World, then goes year by year through the colony’s first three decades. His annals aren’t dry, though. Bradford also has a wicked sense of humor. If would-be colonists weren’t tough enough for what awaited them in New England, they should remain across the Atlantic “till at least they be mosquito proof.” You shouldn’t only read Bradford. He’s a partisan in this contentious history, after all. But you shouldn’t pass on one of the great works of seventeenth-century American non-fiction.