And Poison Fell from the Sky

Synopsis: Marie Therese Martin shares her memoir of growing up in Rumford, Maine in the 1950’s and 60’s. Rumford is a mill town in the Androscoggin River Valley, the home of exquisite natural beauty and paper mills. Her early life is characterized by her father leaving the family, and she experienced the stigma of divorce in a small Catholic community. She was inspired by her mother to become a nurse, and upon her arrival at the local hospital was soon romantically involved with a local physician. Marriage and many children later, Terry and her husband sound the alarm about the health effects of living in a mill town, a town now called “Cancer Valley” due to the high rates of malignancy.

Review: This is, in many respects, very similar to Mill Town, recently reviewed by cookingthebooksblog.com. Terry is a generation older than our previous author Kerri Arsenault, and her story reflects the challenges women faced in that era. I was completely taken in by Martin’s strait forward account of her life and marriage, and was captivated by her writing. She doesn’t sugar coat things. She seems very much like a woman who makes the best of what life brings her way, even if it isn’t always easy. This was a much more readable narrative than Mill Town and to my assessment, a better book. Environmental activisim came late to her life, but feels like a natural progression of her life and not a tangent. If you only have time for one narrative about Rumford, Maine and the local mill, I would recommend this one.

Rating: 3/5

Recipe: In 1990, Terry wrote a book entitled Le Visage De Ma Grandmere (My Grandmother’s Face) which is a short history of French Acadia (what is now called Nova Scotia), the deportation of the Acadians in 1755, and included recipes from her Acadian forbears. Tourtiere is a French Canadian meat pie, traditionally served as part of the Christmas holidays. Variations differ a bit between regions, and my experience with tourtiere is usually with ground meats flavored with warm spices. This is described as an “authentic Acadian recipe,” and a bit more pared down.

3 pounds of pork shoulder

1 pound of stew beef cut into small bite size pieces

2 good sized onions

salt and pepper to taste

1) Place in kettle, covering meat with water. Simmer slowly for about 2 hours adding water if necessary.

2) Roll out pie crust of your choosing and place meat pie filling between two crusts.

3) Cook at 425 until crust is done.