Our newest book club selection is Arundel by Kenneth Roberts. We are going with a Maine theme this time around. Kenneth Roberts' historical novel Arundel (1930) recounts the early life of the York County area and influenced the reemergence of the name Arundel for a Maine town.
In 1928 he left his position as a staff correspondent at the Saturday Evening Post to write historical fiction. His early work, while extensively researched, did not generate popular excitement. Nevertheless, Roberts' March to Quebec; Journals of the Members of Arnold's Expedition (1940), compiled and annotated during the writing of Arundel, is an excellent source for the history of that event.
Roberts career turned the corner after receiving an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth in 1934. By 1937 his Northwest Passage was a best seller and a year later both Middlebury and Bowdoin colleges awarded him honorary degrees.
He became fascinated with the traditional practice of dowsing -- allegedly being able to find water under the ground by sensing a downward pull on wood held in ones hands. Considered quite unscientific, he was ridiculed for his belief in the "art."
Two months before he died in 1957, Roberts received a Pulitzer Prize for "his historical novels which have long contributed to the creation of greater interest in our early American history." His papers are at the Dartmouth College Library in Hanover, New Hampshire.
We will meet May 19th, details to follow!
