Customer Reviews

Clear Pond: The Reconstruction of a Life

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Roger Mitchell is a poet, not a professional historian. He became intrigued, even obsessed, by a random historical question. This is a book, not only about a place and its people. It is an account of an author's passionate search for an answer. In a quest for an old-time Adirondacker, Mitchell investigated the history of one, rather ordinary, Yankee family in the Adirondacks. His poetic narrative provides a profile in microcosm of authentic Adirondack culture. This book is already a classic of Adirondack literature.

For anyone already bitten by the genealogy bug, this book will chart a familiar path. For anyone who is contemplating undertaking research on their family's history, read this first: it captures perfectly the passion and the curiosity that propels the researcher in what is often a confusing and frustrating quest, with many dead ends. More important, Mitchell manages both to give personality and character to his long-dead subjects, and to make the time and place in which they lived come alive for us. It is "human" history on a personal scale.

Roger Mitchell is a poet, not a professional historian. He became intrigued, even obsessed, by a random historical question. This is a book, not only about a place and its people. It is an account of an author's passionate search for an answer. In a quest for an old-time Adirondacker, Mitchell investigated the history of one, rather ordinary, Yankee family in the Adirondacks. His poetic narrative provides a profile in microcosm of authentic Adirondack culture. This book is already a classic of Adirondack literature.