Meet the Authors: Kerri Arsenault

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 her own family. Years after she moved away, Kerri 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: Reckoning with What Remains is a personal investigation, where Kerri 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 toxins and disease. Mill Town is a moral wake-up call that asks, "Whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?" Mill Town was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Prize and won the Maine Literary Award for nonfiction. Kerri is a book critic, teacher, book editor at Orion magazine, and contributing editor at The Literary Hub. Meet Kerri and dozens of Maine authors at Books in Boothbay on September 11, 2021. On-site book sales benefit the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library and the Boothbay Harbor Railway Village. Be sure to get your books signed by your favorite authors! See you there!