A memoir of a full life, told two or three pages at a time

In Claremont Boy: My New Hampshire Roots and the Gift of Memory, Joseph Steinfield shares humorous, insightful, and often poignant recollections spanning more than half a century. The author recalls what it was like to grow up as part of a small Jewish community in a New Hampshire mill town, but the book includes much more. Readers will meet, and perhaps recognize from their own lives, grandparents and other relatives from Eastern Europe; influential public school teachers; some public figures whom he has known, Julia Child among them; and a host of other fascinating people from New England and beyond, including a Hebrew-speaking Muslim from the Northern Caucasus Republic of Adygeya and a P.L.O. leader from Jericho in the West Bank. Originally written over several years for the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript of Peterborough, New Hampshire, these essays are united by the author's sense of irony and the unexpected. Steinfield's true stories will produce laughter, an occasional tear, and a reminder of the universality of life's experiences. Whether writing about a caring neighbor, an encounter with governmental bureaucracy, or the surprise endings that often occur in life, Steinfield has taken his storytelling skills and used them to recount a life well lived. Claremont Boy: My New Hampshire Roots and the Gift of Memory will resonate with readers everywhere.