Revere Beach Stories (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781949279597)

In Revere Beach Stories, a collaborative effort between poets Kevin Carey, Jennifer Martelli, and photographer Stephenie Young, words dance with images across the pages, complexly figured and comparative, yet easy to read. Take, for example, the winter imagery of Carey's "The Recipe", where "sea smoke dances off the ice packs," and recollects "the first chill of stepping into the icy blue water in April." Young's accompanying photo features a woman and child, standing in the imperfectly blue shallows of Broad Sound, the Nahant skyline in the background. The light blues of the water compared to the woman's red swimsuit combine to form an off-kilter vignette of the beach proper, familiar immediately to anyone who's ever been there, the gulls dipping and swerving, couples overhearing the occasional raucous conversation over the breeze.

The "Veiled Women," Martelli presents us with a scenario familiar - before, now, and after - to anyone who is learning to live with a parent's Alzheimer's, a place where "walking along Broadway from the bakery and sometimes, the new burqa store, got my father nervous." Mentioning the burqa store and the reader's possible explanation complicates the narrative and compels a reader's interest. Young's photo foregrounds a woman in a burqa wading in the shallows, the subdued lighting giving the impression of early dusk. Martelli expertly wins a reader's approval with words sharp enough to become mottoes: "if you live here long enough, no one will meet your gaze."

Revere Beach Stories will show you just what it means to be a recorder of lives in this seaside haven, first public beach in America and a microcosm of the larger New England community.

- Rusty Barnes, author of On Broad Sound