Penny Guisinger

Postcards from Here is a capturing of a community, a harsh and beautiful place, a family, and the internal experience of its author in the form of micro-essays. The book takes on the realities of rural New England life, the moments and details that stitch a community together, the politics of being gay and divorced in such a place, and the visceral details of raising children, gardening, porcupines, travel, marriage, and other hazards of living. Written in a coastal community at the eastern edge of the United States, this book works to transcend the Maine depicted on touristy postcards by crafting missives its rural residents might really send—what true stories this place and its people have to tell. The individual pieces in Postcards tell stories that are both intensely personal and entirely communal in scope, and as a collection they create a portrait of one person’s attempt to do a good job at this business of being human.