Glad you found me. Look around. You’ll find bits and pieces of me here, some new, some old. And more to come — a biography, a collection of local ghost stories, another Soper’s Mills novel. I live out in the country among some very strange and wonderful people. They have their ways of getting into my writing. If you stay with me long enough, they might get into you. Caution is advised.
Fiction – Journalism – Memoir – Local History – Videography
Fiction
Born and raised in the Maine woods, her family disintegrating around her, Evvie is caught in a conflict between irreconcilable forces — the instinct to protect her unborn child and the freedom to chose a life for herself.
Betsy Connor Bowen
Grange Is Over (pdf)
On a dull day deep in February livened only by a howling, snow-pelting blizzard, Soper’s Mills Ella Maguire leaned into her mixing bowl, mashed ice-cold chunks of hamburger against eggs, oatmeal and tomato sauce.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 2004-10-14
Journalism
“Winthrop was 100% without power Thursday morning. Fire fighters were out cutting trees, clearing roads for the public works people, trying to stay ahead of the storm.”
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 1997-10-03
Neighbor Helping Neighbor
The Town Office was open for business as normal on the first day of the storm, Wednesday, January 7; every day since then “has been storm management”.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 1997-10-03
Time of Disaster
Area shelters that came to life quickly and survived on volunteerism demonstrated the ability of local Mainers to respond to others with generosity and empathy at a time of serious need.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 1997-10-03
Memoir
The bones of my Yankee ancestors lie all over New England. Their gravestones tip in the frost-heaved soil of hundreds of winters. The rains have flattened their once-deeply-carved names.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 2004-10-13
Local History:
Mr. Beach Had It Torn Down (pdf)
This old barn on the North Wayne Road has been torn down, but the memories it evokes remain.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 1997-10-03
Bon Jour (pdf)
“Tournez,” he says, and he turns around as he says it. The inflection in his voice signals command, so sixteen children stand up from their chairs and turn around.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 1997-10-03
Blue Devil Richard Lincoln (pdf)
Blue Devil Richard Lincoln was a young man of 18 not yet having begun his senior year at Winthrop High School when he was drafted. It was 1943, and the world was at war.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 1997-10-03
A Simpler Time (pdf)
Doris Nickerson was born in 1913 and grew up in North Wayne. At the age of 84 seated on the living room couch in her home beside the millstream that flows over the Lovejoy Pond Dam into Pickerel Pond, she spoke of her girlhood.
- Betsy Connor Bowen
All That, Husband and Father Too (pdf)
First off, Foster Beach is a Maine man of the old style: farmer, housebuilder, plumber, electrician. All that, and husband and father too.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 1997-10-03
“Foster Beach was cutting wood…”
Still standing is the house the Town of Wayne built to house one of its needy citizens many years ago.
- Betsy Connor Bowen, 1997-10-03
Videography
“The People Nobody Believed In”
