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Mill Town

Reckoning with What Remains

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"This is a listen for anyone interested in small-town America, how it's changed, and why it matters...Though Arsenault may not be a professional narrator, her passion for these important stories comes through with just the right amount of sincerity." — AudioFile Magazine

This program is read by the author.
A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?
Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town's economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname "Cancer Valley."
Mill Town is an personal investigation, where Arsenault sifts through historical archives and scientific reports, talks to family and neighbors, and examines her own childhood to illuminate the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease. Mill Town is a moral wake-up call that asks, Whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press
"While this is a portrait of a town in decline, it's also a paean to the community that cared for it and those who have remained there, including Arsenault's own classmates, friends, and family. The author's unusually quiet, tender reading evinces that love, while also clearly setting that affection against the brutality of the forces that have laid Mexico low." — Booklist

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      This is a listen for anyone interested in small-town America, how it's changed, and why it matters. Kerri Arsenault narrates her own work and does a fine job sharing personal stories of growing up in the mill town of Mexico, Maine. As corporate greed and malfeasance abound, the community is torn between the mill jobs they desperately need and their struggles with health problems, including high incidences of cancer. Though Arsenault may not be a professional narrator, her passion for these important stories comes through with just the right amount of sincerity. She never overdoes her heartbreaking depiction of the price a community must pay because of a corporation that cares only about the bottom line. This is an important listen, told well. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from June 8, 2020
      In this powerful investigative memoir, book critic Arsenault examines her relationship with Mexico, Maine, her now-downtrodden hometown. In 2009, Arsenault returned there from Connecticut after her grandfather died; while in this town (pop. 2,600) that owes its existence to a nearby 118-year-old paper mill, she decided to resume research on the Arsenault family’s French-Canadian lineage. She quickly learns of the environmental havoc wrought by the mill, which earned Mexico the nickname of “Cancer Alley,” and uncovers the many obituaries citing people who “died after a battle with cancer” believed to be caused by ash emitted by the mill (dubbed “mill snow”) that also crept into her family’s home. From there, Arsenault embarks on a decade-long probe into the environmental abuses of a company that supported her family for three generations. “The legacies powerful men construct almost always emerge from the debris of other people’s lives,” she writes, yet her inquiry only deepened her bond with Mexico (“We can and probably should go back to confront what made us leave, what made us fall in and out of love with the places that create us, or to see what we left behind”). Arsenault paints a soul-crushing portrait of a place that’s suffered “the smell of death and suffering” almost since its creation. This moving and insightful memoir reminds readers that returning home—“the heart of human identity”—is capable of causing great joy and profound disappointment.

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  • English

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