The Weight of Snow and Regret

A Novel

Sheldon Poor Farm Image Credit: Sheldon Historical Society

Greetings! I hope you’ve all had a good week.

I am writing to tell you about the second book project I’m working on, in addition to Simple Pleasures: Haiku from the Place Just Right. It’s a novel based on the closure of the last poor farm in Vermont in 1968: The Weight of Snow and Regret.

This wasn’t a novel I’d planned to write. In fact, after my debut novel, Telling Sonny, I’d planned to compile a collection of short stories. However, I happened to stumble upon an article in Vermont Life Magazine about Vermont’s poor farm system, which ended with the passage of the Vermont Social Welfare Act of 1967.

The last poor farm was located in Sheldon Springs, only seven miles from where my family lived in Enosburg Falls, and I remembered going by the poorhouse itself when I was in high school.

What most struck me about the Vermont Life article was how angry the Enosburg Overseer of the Poor still was—twenty years after the fact—that the State had closed down the poor farm and scattered its remaining residents to the four winds.

How could I resist the character possibilities of such a story? I couldn’t—and three years later, The Weight of Snow and Regret is going through final copy edits.

Thank you for reading!

Till next time,
Liz

All that’s left of the Sheldon Poor Farm (Taken 2023)