ASHLAND

A multilayered and richly evocative portrait of a dying New Hampshire mill town, told through the voices of intertwined families during the 20th century.

“That’s us in a nutshell, mama and me, both of us free but not free of each other,” writes Carolyn, the initial narrator of Simon’s debut novel, set in fictional Ashland, New Hampshire. Carolyn, born in 1972 when her mother, Ellie, is just 17 and her nameless father has already disappeared, might as well be writing about the hold her home state has on so many other characters, from a couple named Edith and Gordon who meet in a 1920s tuberculosis sanatorium to her college writing instructor, Geoff, who admits he has “come to love New Hampshire.” These men and women often recall the region’s heyday with an achingly honest nostalgia: “There was a time when…[t]here was work enough farming the land, in the timber trade, good jobs, and in the mills too.” Yet just as often, they recall times when change came. “The world was slowly slipping away,” laments Carolyn’s uncle, Andy, a contrast to how painful the intersection of public and private can be, such as his brother’s life-altering injury in the Vietnam War. The author’s choice of having first-person narrators, each opening their chapters in medias res, allows each character’s interiority to blossom without question. Whether a section builds on what came before or introduces new information, its voice arrives fully formed, akin to elements of local geography like the Pemigewasett River or a peak in the Great White Mountains. “Live Free or Die” is the New Hampshire state motto, but no one in Ashland is ever completely free from their origins, whether they leave or stay.

Powerfully poetic, this novel serves as a cross section of the Granite State, a testament to American virtues—and flaws.