When I first opened A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany, I expected a quaint collection of small-town stories. What I found was something richer, stranger, and more layered. Tom Shachtman’s book is not so much a single story as it is a patchwork quilt stitched from voices, artifacts, and memories. We meet townspeople past and present, from accident victims hovering between life and death to schoolteachers scribbling in their diaries, from old family dynasties with troubling legacies to modern-day residents juggling community duty and private worries. The narrative dances between perspectives: sometimes a newspaper clipping, sometimes a poem, sometimes the musings of a geological formation. It’s messy and alive, much like the New England hamlet it captures, spanning from Labor Day 2003 to Memorial Day 2004, with centuries of echoes reverberating in the background.

What struck me first was the sheer variety of voices. Shachtman has a gift for making each character distinct, whether it’s the weary but hopeful thoughts of Grace Newington in a hospital waiting room or the earthy humor of the women at Get’nGo who call themselves “the sorority of the brown bags.” The writing has an intimacy to it that I enjoyed. At times, I found myself moved by how history and personal memory get tangled. I loved how the town’s past, its Native roots, its Whitbred settlers, its scandals, sits so close to the surface that every conversation seems to brush against it. The book shifts forms. A poem would melt into a diary entry, which would jump into a mock playlet, and I’d have to steady myself. But maybe that’s the point: a miscellany should feel like rummaging through a box in an attic, never sure what you’ll find next.

The book also made me think about how communities wrestle with memory and change. There’s anger and pride about names, schools, and family legacies. There’s tenderness in how neighbors watch over one another, yet sharp divides between “Cobblers” and “Gobblers,” the locals and the weekenders. I liked that the author never smoothed these tensions away. He let the contradictions stand, and they felt real. The emotions felt raw. I found myself laughing at one passage and then feeling the weight of grief a page later. The shifts gave the book a strange vitality that straight storytelling might have missed.

A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany is less about a plot than about a place, less about neat answers than about what it feels like to live in the shadow of history while stumbling through the present. I would recommend it to readers who like community sagas, who enjoy oral histories, or who simply want to sink into the rhythm of a small town that is both ordinary and mythic. If you’re willing to wander, to let yourself be surprised, you’ll find something touching here.

Pages: 286