Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Earth, Sky, + Water, and author Mel Allen for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

Living in New Hampshire, I am very aware of Yankee Magazine. Perhaps you are too. If not, I can recommend it as a magazine dedicated to life in New England, as well as some of the quirks present here. Mel Allen was editor of the magazine, having retired from it in 2025. He has been on the staff since 1979, so he has seen much come and go in his years in New England. Here in New England is a collection of his writing through the years. Curated by Allen himself, he feels the 45 articles present in this book reflect his life’s work.

I was entertained a great deal while reading Here in New England. The articles span the years, with some early in his career, such as the time spent with the Eruzione family after Mike Eruzione’s famed goal in the U.S. vs. Soviet hockey game at the 1980 Olympics. I had the feel of an earnest young reporter chasing the most recent celebrity in New England, and at the center of it, he finds a family very different from his own that leaves him a bit mystified.

If there is any follow-up information to the stories, Allen writes an addendum to the article. For the more noted names, we might not need it. However, for many of the lesser-known people he celebrates, it provides closure of a sort. Tome has changed, and yet some of the stories still have deep meaning.

One of the stories that stuck with me was about Samantha Smith. Those of us who lived during the Cold War might recognize the name. Originally from Maine, she wrote a letter to Yuvi Andropov asking if he intended to start a nuclear war. Samantha became something of a folk hero in the Soviet Union after the letter was published there. Her story is tragic, though, and Allen’s writing focuses on her mother trying to still find meaning and purpose in a life without her daughter. We could use more Samantha Smiths right about now.

I loved another story about a young political refugee from Angola who discovered poetry while attending high school in Lewiston, Maine. He was still struggling to learn English when he discovered a love of poetry and ended up at a national competition. In Allen’s afterword, he states the young man is married with children and still living there. I found myself wondering if this was still the case after the recent ICE incursion into Maine.

The stories did seem to lean a little more to Maine than the rest of New England, but it is the quirkier place as far as I’ve seen. Before all of the reality shows and books that let people into this side of the state, there were Allen’s articles in Yankee Magazine. I really enjoyed the book quite a bit, and can highly recommend it. It’s not a comprehensive picture of the area from the last forty or so years, but slices of life that help see through the good and bad headlines that seem to dominate the narrative.