Bestselling author and Hancock resident Howard Mansfield is interested in both the stories we tell, and those we don’t.
“I’ve been writing about this region since 1993, when I did my first book, ‘The Memory House,'” Mansfield said, a volume followed by nine more books set in this region or around New Hampshire.
“I’ve always been very interested in the stories we tell about where we live and the past, and I’m equally interested in the stories we refuse to tell,” he added.
Mansfield will talk about the connection between his writing career and his love for the Monadnock region at the Jaffrey Civic Center’s “Stories to Share” event at 5 p.m. on Friday, April 2.
“Stories to Share” at the Jaffrey Civic Center is free and open to the public, but registration is required. The monthly event features local residents with unique and compelling stories every first Friday evening of the month, October through May.
Mansfield jokes that his talk at the Civic Center “is trying to illustrate the unified field theory of how all my books are related.”
“I want to show people why all my books relate back to my very first evening in New Hampshire, when I walked into a historical society in New Ipswich, which is where we found our first house to rent,” he said. “I’ll be talking about, looking back, why do I write about these small towns and these characters? Why did I do that?”
Mansfield said that after moving to the Monadnock region, he dug deep into local history, exploring historical records and historic places.
“We are constructing the place where we live by the stories we tell,” he said. “My approach is to be a tourist in this region–to explore, to go into the archives, to find out, what is it about this place that makes it the way it is? How do things come to be the way they are?”
Mansfield’s talk will be accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation of slides and images from his books and and many years of research about the region.
“I’ll illustrate my various themes, places I’ve been, and I’ll have images from my books, ” he said.
Mansfield and his wife, bestselling author Sy Montgomery, had been living in Boston and working as journalists when a friend urged them to visit the Monadnock region around 1984.
“She said, ‘Oh, you should come up here, it’s cheap!’ ” Mansfield said. “It’s no longer cheap, but it’s a fantastic place to live and we have just loved it.”
Mansfield’s books celebrate place, history, and how the landscape and setting shape the stories and people who live there. His titles featuring New Hampshire and the Monadnock Region include “Dwelling in Possibilities,” “Chasing Eden: A Book of Seekers,” “Turning the World Upside Down,” “Summer Over Autumn: A Book of Small-Town Life,” and “Sheds,” an exploration of New England architecture with Peterborough photographer Joanna Eldredge Morrissey.
Mansfield is also the editor of “Where the Mountain Stands Alone: Stories of Place in the Monadnock Region.”
Mansfield has a new book coming out this fall, “Invisible Monuments: A Tribute to Memory and the Summoning of the Past,” which is his exploration into why history is preserved the way it is. Chapters focusing on the Monadnock Region include stories about a local Irish labor riot and some little known history of Cathedral of the Pines in Rindge.
“There are many stories no one has ever written, and I’m fascinated by that,” he said. “Why do some stories get told? How do we choose what exhibits end up in a museum and what becomes a statue or a memorial, and what does not? We write our stories, and that becomes history.”
For more information about author Howard Mansfield, go to www.howardmansfield.com.