Customer Reviews

Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

About 35 years ago, I got excited to hear Harry Chapin singing about (broadly speaking) my part of the world:

"Up in Massachusetts there's a little spit of land

The men who make the maps, yes, they call the place Cape Ann

The men who do the fishing call it Gloucester Harbor Sound

But the women left behind, they call the place Dogtown"

Heads & Tales

So when I got this book, one of the first things I did was check the index and found that the song was mentioned. Next, I looked up Thoreau and found that his journal entry about the area was quoted.

When I actually started reading, I soon realized that this is indeed a book with a little of whatever you're looking for. But contrary to the song lyric, one of the main threads of this book involves a man left behind, not by a ship lost at sea but by a brutal murder in Dogtown. Along with walks on the trails of Dogtown, you'll also find explorations of the area's history from colonists to witches to pirates, and the reactions of an artist and a poet and the author to this strange area of land.

It's strange not only because it's an undeveloped area of land near a major city (not just undeveloped--in many cases it's not even known who if anyone owns the land) or because of the boulders engraved with odd phrases, but because many people feel something unusual about the place. I have to admit I'm one of them. It was the early 90s before I first hiked Dogtown, a few years after the murder featured in the book which I didn't know about at the time. I saw the boulders, and the broken Whale's Jaw, and got lost on the many trails. Most of all, I felt a sense of claustrophobia, an oddness which I haven't felt in any other place I've hiked. It wasn't a pleasant feeling and in future visits to the area, I stuck to walking beside the ocean in neighboring Rockport.

I enjoyed the book very much, especially some pages near the end featuring a couple old timers who care about Dogtown much more than most people, but in very different ways--one wants the area left completely wild while the other wants the trails heavily maintained and well marked (I recognized the name of the second man and believe I was once part of a group hike he led). I do agree with some reviewers that the book perhaps includes a few too many topics, but given the author's tendency to draw parallels among events, I did wonder if the book's structure was intended to reflect the meandering trails of the area.

Edited to add that after reading the review in the NY Times and some here claiming that the book would be better if it focused on the crime and eliminated many of the other aspects, I couldn't disagree more. It might well have been a more popular book, but it would have been a much lesser book. That might seem contradictory to my last paragraph, but an example of what I had in mind was a page about pirates hundreds of years ago, not the present day issues affecting Dogtown mentioned in the Times review which I considered some of the most interesting parts of the book.

Who doesn't love a ghost story? Remember telling creepy tales around the campfire, deep in the woods, shivering with fear while eerie screeches and spooky sounds emanated out of the shadows of the night? Those were myths and legends designed to leave listeners glancing over their shoulders with a growing unease or cause a sleepless night. But Dogtown, an abandoned colonial community in Massachusetts' Cape Ann area, is a real place, one that many have claimed is haunted. It has a past rich in scary stories, witches and warlocks, ghost sightings, and general hair-raising, spine-tingling malaise among its visitors. And it also has a real-life bogeyman in its sinister history and has now become a genuine ghost town.

As far back as anyone can remember, Dogtown has lured famous writers, poets, painters and sculptors --- all drawn there by its unique countryside and its strange residents. One such artist's undertaking was to carve huge boulders heralding life lessons and tidings such as "Be on time" or simply "Courage." The Dogtown people prided themselves on their oddity; you might even say they reveled in it. At least, until one man carried his peculiarity too far, descending into perversion, and killed not only a well-loved local woman but also Dogtown's sense of uneasy peace.

The same reasons that drew previous authors to explore Dogtown drew Elyssa East to the community as well. She felt an urge to see what had so entranced a man named Marsden Hartley to create a series of paintings of its distinctive landscape. But what she discovered was Dogtown's dark past, one that involved Peter Hodgkins. Something made Peter different from everyone else; his tastes leaned toward deviance, a proclivity that might have triggered alarms had the right people been paying attention. The townsfolk simply laid it off to Peter's weirdness, looking the other way when he repeatedly exposed himself to women, ultimately turning alarmingly physical. Unfortunately, the legal rebuke was always too soft, allowing Peter back on the streets with not much more than a slap on the wrist.

So it was that, one lovely summer morning, schoolteacher Anne Natti was walking through the woods with her dog. A chance encounter with Hodgkins sealed her fate, leaving her bruised, bloody, with a caved-in head, injuries that brought about a slow, painful death.

As Elyssa East guides us through Ann's last day and her killer's trial, she also guides us through Dogtown's colorful history, which includes more than just stories of witches and demons and pirates lurking in the nearby waters as regular folks worked to build a life on the inhospitable peninsula. Not all comers to Dogtown had a negative experience, though. Some were seduced by a sort of hopeful awe, a compulsion to feel its aura. A mystery surrounded the twisted trees and shrubs, tempting imaginations and, fortunately, imaginations gave way to poems, paintings and books.

DOGTOWN is a beautifully written account of the community's magnetism, its repulsion and the inexplicable pull it possesses. American History buffs and murder mystery lovers will delight in this alluring book.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

Dogtown is an abandoned area just outside Gloucester, Mass. It has some colonial-era cellar holes, some odd rock formations, and some associations with a minor painter (Marsden Hartley) and a minor poet (Charles Olson).

The book is basically the author's attempt to tie these various strands together, along with a murder that occurred there in 1984. It's a good device for creating suspense (switching from one story line to the other, ending each with a little something hanging in the air), but unfortunately none of these stories amount to much of anything in the end. The crime story is not bad, but the others just kind of peter out. East tries to tie them all together throughout and to wrap them up neatly at the end, but it's all rather forced. I'm not sure she knew where any of this was going to go (except perhaps for the crime story) until she started to write it.

Another thing that was rather forced was East's attempt at giving Dogtown a real sense of place. Based on the number of artists and authors who have had some interest in Dogtown over the years, there does seem to be something there. This didn't ever really come across to me in the book though. Lots of stating, but very little demonstrating.

I did like the author's style, though she does tend to chew on something ad nauseum. There are also little vignettes and long asides that seem beside the point and do very little to keep any of the stories in motion. To tell the truth, the stories would have made much better magazine articles. Altogether, those might have amounted to 20-some pages, instead of the 250 that the reader is forced to slog through.

While I had visited the Gloucester/Rockport area three times over the years I had never heard of Dogtown. I found the reporting on the murder very interesting,ditto on the perp. But I believe the author dwelled too much on her rapture over the paintings and the connection she felt to them and the boulders. Maybe this shouldn't be a criticism as I feel this way about beaches and oceans. Hard to explain but I just felt some parts of the book were excellent/fascinating while others just dragged along. If I ever get to Gloucester again I will definitely search for Dogtown and perhaps try to take a walk there.

I've lived in Gloucester for close to twenty years now and I haven't spent hardly any time in Dogtown. Once, when I first moved here, I went on a walking tour of Dogtown to see the famous Babson Boulders and my friend Carolyn O'Connor has taken me up to Babson Reservoir to show me the ones near there. A few years back I spent a week sequestered alone in the woods at Walker Hancock's studio while I wrote the final draft of The Old Mermaid's Tale. But, to a large extent, Dogtown is as much a mystery to me as it is to a lot of folks who live here. For that reason I was eager to read Elyssa East's Dogtown: Death & Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. It's a good read.

Ms East came to her fascination with Dogtown through an unusual way, she became enchanted by Marsden Hartley's paintings of Dogtown. The paintings are harsh, stark and monolithically mesmerizing and it would have been nice if there had been reproductions of them in the book, along with a map or two of Dogtown. In fact, if I have a complaint about the book it is that it would have benefited greatly from illustrations and photographs. I live here so I know what much of what she talks about looks like but I can't quite imagine how people in other parts of the country envision it. But then again, maybe not.

East weaves a tale composed of equal parts folklore and fact. Fact here tends to be murky at times since Dogtown's founding close to 400 years ago leaves few records and much of what passe for history is really speculation, legend, or "facts" recorded 150 years ago - which was 200 years after they happened. Following her fascination with the Hartley paintings, East came to Gloucester and spent time with some of our more colorful characters. As I was reading I tried to imagine how her descriptions of people I know would sound to people elsewhere. As previously mentioned Carolyn is a friend, so is Peter Anastas. I know Shep Abbott and Bob Ritchie and I've met Ted Tarr, Isabel Natti and Joe Orange so seeing them as characters in a book is interesting enough. Especially since some of them seemed like characters in a book even before they were.

Ms East writes beautifully. Her prose is luxurious and well-crafted and she has a breadth of knowledge that lends itself well to the subject. The book is composed of alternating chapters, those recounting the history and mystery of Dogtown, and those detailing the story of the 1984 murder of Anne Natti in Dogtown. Her chapters on the history and her explorations with guides including Shep and Ted Tarr are beautifully written and I was captivated by her vision. The chapters on the murder bogged down with more detail than I thought was needed but I'm the first to admit I don't read a lot of true crime. People who do will probably find all the details of the trial and the events leading up to it quite fascinating.

Her chapter on the late poet Charles Olsen is one of her best. Though Olsen died long before I came here I did know Vincent Ferrini and, though I had a hard time recognizing him through her description, when Vincent recited his own poetry he was the powerful, thundering, passionate giant she describes and that is a good way for him to be introduced to the rest of the country.

I liked Dogtown: Death & Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. I love the title and it is appropriately mysterious and fascinating. I don't know if Ms East really captured the spirit of Dogtown but she did create a mythic narrative that is bound to fascinate readers whether or not they know our corner of the world. Gloucester has a mystique that is hard to convey but writers keep trying and rightly so. It's something in the smell of the air and the quality of light bouncing off the water that surrounds us - and in the ghostly shadows that lurk in the nooks and crannies of this island.

I am a native North Shore resident who finds the mystery of Dogtown compelling. Ten years ago during a family outing, I found a brochure about "Dogtown" which described its colorful history and the miles of hiking trails. Unfortunately until this time, I have not adventured to Dogtown but after reading this tale of true crime, myths and history next Spring the dog and I will make the trip to Dogtown instead of Good Harbor Beach.

If you have never had the opportunity to visit Gloucester and Cape Ann, you can not imagine the beauty of the sea and its surroundings plus the history that the area envokes; this book does paint a fairly accurate picture of the area. If you enjoy reading about intrique historical places, this book is an extremely interesting read. When purchasing the book, only the Dogtown title stood out and did not read the any reviews before reading the book and was pleasantly surprise about the true crime element of the book.

I lived on the North Shore of Boston in 1984 and worked for a local community newspaper group but can not recall the story of the Natti murder. A senseless murder of a woman with so much to give to society by a society misfit; a misfit who was lost between society's cracks. Peter was a time bomb and unfortunately Mrs. Natti was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Please do not let this crime story keep you from discovering this rafied seaside community with all its colorful history.

Elyssa East is a strong writer with a curious mind. This book touches upon many subjects that piqued my interest: wild, forgotten landscapes, the kind that inspire people to write, paint, and reach back into untapped parts of themselves. Having worked and painted in Gloucester myself,and having marveled at its distinct neighborhoods with their unique and varied character, I was conscious of the fact that the peninsula seemed to have no easy way to traverse through its geographic heart, and in some sense felt disunited at its spritual core too. When my book club suggested we read Anita Diamant's novel about Dogtown, it seemed that reading the real historic record of Dogtown might flesh out my understanding of what Dogtown was, and where it went. I am certainly glad I did.

The book uses a common device of winding two parallel stories, one about a curiously senseless contemporary murder which occurred in 1984, in alternating chapters with the history of Dogtown over a century and a half of its rise and fall. This sets a rythymic tone that propels the book forward, but sometimes feels overly contrived.I was reminded of "The Orchid Thief" in the way the narrative is handled. Like Susan Orleans, Ms East does her homework well, and she also handles the eccentric characters who are her subjects with the same deft hand. She asks our questions, and listens well.

The sociopath who brutally murders a woman in Dogtown seems to have felt that Dogtown itself, with its unearthly stone erratics piled into beastly shapes, and its unruly landscape, pockmarked by remnants of cellar holes, was outside of the normal constraints of human civilization, and that he ruled there. The author touches upon, but in my mind, underestimates the contribution of this man having been cruelly bullied as a child. At one point he confabulates a story about how he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder resulting from a made-up stint in Viet Nam. His attempt to trade on the real suffering of veterans is contemptible. Nonetheless, he clearly was brutalized in other ways, with the inevitable and horrifying result.

I also admire the way the author imbues her story with the intangibles that we yearn for. Babson's boulders stand about, like little boy scouts, pronouncing their deeply practical and Calvinistic aphorisms, such as "Use your head" and "Help Mother", and we are a bit annoyed with his meddlesome preaching. One of the author's most likable characters shows her a rock, deep in the forest, carved by a different hand altogether, that apparently says "Dream of Love". Seen fleetingly by the author, it is never seen again, even with determined searching, and people who have spent their entire lives tracking and studying this wilderness deny ever having seen it. This is a lovely way of showing us how wild a place it was, and apparently, still is. The reader is happy indeed, if it is there.

I wish the book had included some photos of Dogtown, reproduced a few of Marsden Hartley's many paintings, and also included some more of the poetry of both Hartley and Olson, who immortalized the place. Its worth looking at the paintings and sampling more of the poetry.

I've always gravitated towards books that vividly describe places I've never visited, especially if these locations seem as if they were born out of some dark fairytale. Take me to a steamy Amazonian jungle, teeming foreign city, or frigid Himalayan valley, and I'm yours. Somehow, in DOGTOWN, Elyssa East has managed to cast the same exotic spell while transporting me to the dark and brooding wilds of...Massachusetts?

It's true. I've visited the state many times, but I'd never heard of Dogtown, a tangled 3000-acre woodland in historic Gloucester that still seems to be haunted by the town's long history and its own more recent grim secrets. A murder mystery, an exploration of some of the more unexpected corners of the nation's history, and a self-portrait of a thoughtful, complex writer, DOGTOWN is one of the best nonfiction books I've read this year. I look forward to seeing where Elyssa East goes from here.

The 4 stars are not because the book is lacking in written content or because the writer picked a less then interesting subject to write about. No, it looses a star because some photos of the place would have helped. I looked them up on the internet myself to get a better grip on what I was reading about.

The subject of Dogtown is pretty engaging, especially with all the great research the author provides. Her points are clear and while a little creative that aspect of the book was required to keep it flowing the way a good narrative should.

The history of Dogtown has no defining moment that determines why it is of such interest. The author was originally drawn to the locale because of the paintings done of the place by fine artist Marsden Hartley. The book is a collection of a variety of stories from the strange to the violent and oddly insularly, old fashioned, coastal life in New England. From a historical perspective there's nothing that really stands out but the way the stories are told and the area of interest's proximity to both Boston and Salem makes it perfect for a good storyteller to take its history, obscure, secret and well known, to craft them into a compelling subject based entirely on history, facts and legend. We have pilgrims, the revolutionary war, phantoms from the French and Indian war era, a multicultural seafaring culture, tales of pirates and the revolution. On top of that, the place had witches. All of this is intermingled with step by step account of a contemporary and savage murder case that still has the locals baffled, if not over who did it, but why.

The author admits she was looking for an escape from the hectic world and instead she found a place not that was much more an enigma in our modern world.

What made this book for me was not just the author's determined effort to find the inspiration but also her honest revelation that slowly revealed to her the complexity of Dogtown through its history and its residents.

Through her I received an education. That I was entertained was a perk.

Elyssa East's favorite artist produced a series of paintings based on the abandoned Dogtown wilderness near Gloucester, MA. Trying to find some spiritual growth she visited the area, heard some of the typical small town New England gossip that surrounds any area that's been inhabited for hundreds of years and decided to write a book about the place.

It feels like she started out to write a biography of the artist, Marsden Hartley, found that wouldn't make more than a short story then decided to add in the tale of a recent (1980's) murder that took place inside of the Dogtown wilderness when THAT turned out to not be enough to flesh out a book the author then dug up every and any bit of trivia, folklore, rumor and anecdote she could find no matter how distantly related to the main subject, Dogtown. As an example when a somewhat famous poet is mentioned as having spent time in the area we're also treated to the details of a school he taught at, every famous person who also taught at the school even if they had nothing to do with Dogtown. The story meanders; wandering from the past to the present while infrequently touching back on the 1980's murder story.

There's far too much padding added to the book. I struggled for far longer than necessary for a book of this length. In the end the I found it hard to follow and just wanted it to end. I'm sure there are better histories of the Gloucester area out there and while they may not touch on or even mention Dogtown that's probably because in the grand scheme of things very little of real interest ever did happened there in it's hundreds of years of existence.