Description

The area known as Dogtown -- an isolated colonial ruin and surrounding 3,000-acre woodland in storied seaside Gloucester, Massachusetts -- has long exerted a powerful influence over artists, writers, eccentrics, and nature lovers. But its history is also woven through with tales of witches, supernatural sightings, pirates, former slaves, drifters, and the many dogs Revolutionary War widows kept for protection and for which the area was named. In 1984, a brutal murder took place there: a mentally disturbed local outcast crushed the skull of a beloved schoolteacher as she walked in the woods. Dogtown's peculiar atmosphere -- it is strewn with giant boulders and has been compared to Stonehenge -- and eerie past deepened the pall of this horrific event that continues to haunt Gloucester even today.

In alternating chapters, Elyssa East interlaces the story of this grisly murder with the strange, dark history of this wilderness ghost town and explores the possibility that certain landscapes wield their own unique power.

East knew nothing of Dogtown's bizarre past when she first became interested in the area. As an art student in the early 1990s, she fell in love with the celebrated Modernist painter Marsden Hartley's stark and arresting Dogtown landscapes. She also learned that in the 1930s, Dogtown saved Hartley from a paralyzing depression. Years later, struggling in her own life, East set out to find the mysterious setting that had changed Hartley's life, hoping that she too would find solace and renewal in Dogtown's odd beauty. Instead, she discovered a landscape steeped in intrigue and a community deeply ambivalent about the place: while many residents declare their passion for this profoundly affecting landscape, others avoid it out of a sense of foreboding.

Throughout this richly braided first-person narrative, East brings Dogtown's enigmatic past to life. Losses sustained during the American Revolution dealt this once thriving community its final blow. Destitute war widows and former slaves took up shelter in its decaying homes until 1839, when the last inhabitant was taken to the poorhouse. He died seven days later. Dogtown has remained abandoned ever since, but continues to occupy many people's imaginations. In addition to Marsden Hartley, it inspired a Bible-thumping millionaire who carved the region's rocks with words to live by; the innovative and influential postmodernist poet Charles Olson, who based much of his epic Maximus Poems on Dogtown; an idiosyncratic octogenarian who vigilantly patrols the land to this day; and a murderer who claimed that the spirit of the woods called out to him.

In luminous, insightful prose, Dogtown takes the reader into an unforgettable place brimming with tragedy, eccentricity, and fascinating lore, and examines the idea that some places can inspire both good and evil, poetry and murder.

About the Author

Elyssa East received her B.A. in art history from Reed College and her M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University's School of the Arts, where she was the recipient of three prestigious fellowships: the Susan G. Hertog Research Assistantship, a Departmental Research Assistantship, and a Writing Division Merit Fellowship. Her Master's thesis—a draft of this manuscript—won an M.F.A. Faculty Selects award. Elyssa has received additional awards and fellowships from the Ragdale, Jerome, and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundations; the University of Connecticut; and the Phillips Library.

Elyssa's writing has been published in various New England regional magazines as well as The Brooklyn Rail, Guernica, and Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, and is forthcoming in The New York Times. A scene from Elyssa's opera libretto, Mr. Hawthorne's Engagement, was performed with singers from the Met Opera as part of American Opera Project's Composers and the Voice series. Elyssa created Columbia University's Artists' Resource Center and ran KGB Bar's Columbia University Faculty Selects Reading Series for three years. Additionally she has worked as a nonfiction reviews editor at Publisher's Weekly; the Managing Director of the Maine Summer Dramatic Institute and Executive Producer of Shakespeare in Deering Oaks Park in Portland, Maine; an archaeologist's assistant; and a dump-truck driver. A native of Georgia, Elyssa currently resides in New York City.

Praise for Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town…

"A MESMERIZING FUGUE of knife-edge true crime, deviant Yankee Americana, and historical evildoings. With an insider's authenticity, East commands a haunted haven where renowned American thinkers and artists seek hideout, and finds the brilliant pin dot on a mysterious American murder map, charting a community's bouts of wickedness for generations toward a spellbinding modern homicide. No other book captures our colonial ghost history with such chilly quirks, intimate lore, and fireworks. A pure original, East guides us through stunning supernatural gates into a bountiful wilderness." -- MARIA FLOOK, author of Invisible Eden

"This book is a wonder. I fell completely under its spell -- Elyssa East does not merely reupholster the old bones of Dogtown, she plunges you headlong into the green mystery of this place; I loved the looking-glass chill of opening her book and finding myself in another world entirely. Dogtown is true literary sorcery, a portal to one of the strangest places in America." -- KAREN RUSSELL, author of St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

"Beautifully written, deftly told, and suspenseful to the very end -- a stunning work of reportage. A keenly observant writer with a painter's eye for detail, East explores the strange, hypnotic spell that Dogtown seems to cast upon all -- including herself -- who enter its woods. The result is a riveting and very personal book that both dazzles and unnerves." -- JULIE OTSUKA, author of When the Emperor Was Divine

"Elyssa East's narrative history of Dogtown, Massachusetts, is a fascinating book, sometimes strange, sometimes mystical, but always gripping. Her exploration of its dark, eccentric past begs the question: do certain mythic landscapes influence its inhabitants to do great good and, at times, to do great evil?" -- KATHLEEN KENT, author of The Heretic's Daughter

"Dogtown is a haunting and powerful and hypnotic book, a tour-de-force of history. Part novelist, part l940's gumshoe working the streets, Elyssa East is a writer whose wonderful attention to detail and unflinching gaze at human behavior is the rarest of gifts. This book is both an old-fashioned page-turner -- what happened in Dogtown? -- to a modern social x-ray of small town America. Gloucester, Massachusetts is where very real, very strange, and very memorable life took place, and we need to thank Ms. East for presenting it all to us with the immediacy of a photograph album found in a antique store, dusted off and presented with care and passion."-- Howard Norman, author of What Is Left the Daughter