Over the course of 2019, Indian Lake and its surrounding communities are invited to read “Finding True North, A History of One Small Corner of the Adirondacks.” Readers will be welcomed to participate in any of several book discussions the Library will host over several months. Author Fran Yardley will appear at the Indian Lake Theater Wednesday September 11th to discuss her work and how our own community finds its own sense of place.
More on Finding True North, and review excerpts:
In 1968 Fran and Jay Yardley, a young couple with pioneering spirit, moved to a remote corner of the Adirondacks to revive the long-abandoned but historic Bartlett Carry Club, with its one thousand acres and thirty-seven buildings. The Saranac Lake–area property had been in Jay’s family for generations, and his dream was to restore this summer resort to support himself and, eventually, a growing family. Fran chronicles their journey and, along the way, unearths the history of those who came before, from the 1800s to the present. Offering an evocative glimpse into the past, Finding True North traces the challenges and transformations of one of the world’s most beautiful, least-celebrated places and the people who were tirelessly devoted to it.
“Fran Yardley is a superb storyteller, and this is a superb story—of a camp and of a marriage, illuminating a key corner of the slightly out-of-time paradise that is the Adirondacks.” — Bill McKibben, author of Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
“Fran Yardley has given us an emotionally moving book, combining memoir and Adirondack history. With a singular and powerful voice, in a tightly organized narrative, she deftly weaves together two distinct strands: her own remarkable story and the history of Bartlett’s Carry.” — Philip Terrie, author of Seeing the Forest: Reviews, Musings, and Opinions from an Adirondack Historian
“Fran Yardley—storyteller, actress, writer, and stalwart Adirondacker—takes us behind the balsam curtain to a truly magical place on the Saranac Lakes. Finding True North is the tale of families, forests, tragedy, and triumph told from the heart with deep insight. It’s a terrific, immersive read.” — Elizabeth Folwell, editor-at-large, Adirondack Life
“Gifted storyteller Fran Yardley has harnessed her many voices to the printed page in this remarkable memoir. Yardley interweaves her firsthand experience hinged to historic documentation with her imagination as she reveals the lives and ways of those who went before and coexisted with her and Jay Yardley at Bartlett Carry. Finding True North is a must-read love story about Adirondack place and people.” — Caroline M. Welsh, Director Emerita, Adirondack Museum
“In Finding True North, Fran Yardley has produced an immediate and necessary addition to the body of Adirondack literature and history. Long in the making, it is beautifully written, authoritative, and moving.” — Christopher Shaw, author of Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods and former editor of Adirondack Life
This project is made possible with the funds from the decentralization program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts.