One Immigrant’s Search For The American Dream Is Subject Of A New Novel By...
The American Dream is perhaps the most powerful element of this nation’s mythology; drawing generations of immigrants from around the world to these shores in search of what they hope will be a better...
View ArticleMass. Child Welfare Agency On The Mend, But Big Challenges Remain
At the State House this week, the interim head of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families appeared before an oversight committee. DCF has faced renewed scrutiny since the agency lost...
View ArticleBeating The Summertime Heat With A Little Night Music
It is one of the very definitions of summer in New England’s cities and villages: to seek respite from the day’s heat with an evening concert outdoors. It doesn’t have to be Tanglewood. Almost any...
View ArticleNew Concerns About Coakley-Partners Deal
There are new concerns about an agreement Attorney General Martha Coakley negotiated to try and control the prices and market power of Partners HealthCare. The implication, from a commission created to...
View ArticleUndocumented Minors From Central America Already Living in Western Mass. And...
Over the past few months, a small number of children streaming across the Mexican border have been housed with family members or friends in western Massachusetts. Among the groups helping them find a...
View ArticleNEPR’s Summer Fiction Series Continues With Rachel Urquhart’s The Visionist
In the 1840s, a religious revival was taking place in many Shaker communities. Members young and old were either adopted or joined through conversion. That’s the basis for writer Rachel Urquhart’s new...
View ArticleNarcan Stops Fatal Overdoses, Heroin Users Choose What To Do From There
The drug Naloxone , also known as Narcan, is a short term fix in a long term fight against heroin addiction. The injection or nasal mist can almost always stop an overdose from becoming fatal. U.S....
View ArticleState House Meeting On Immigration Yields Plenty Of Drama, Little Information
State and local officials and members of law enforcement met at the State House Thursday to discuss Massachusetts’ possible involvement in housing children who crossed the nation’s southern border...
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‘The Kept’ Sends A Mother And Son Into An Unforgiving World
In 1897, a midwife returns to her isolated home in the depths of winter to find her family murdered. That’s the premise of “The Kept,” the next book in our Summer Fiction Series, from author James...
View ArticleCongressional Aide Confronts Guilt-Filled Blast From Her Past, In Rita...
Guilt, religion, love and death. Northampton, Massachusetts, writer Rita Bleiman takes it all on in her latest novel. “Acts of Contrition” — the next book in NEPR’s Summer Fiction series — is set in...
View ArticleThe Sound Of (New) Music
The music of Beethoven and Bach gets a lot of attention in the Berkshires every summer. But amid the more august offerings, there is a musical collective that wants to rip the powdered wig off...
View ArticleMass. Substance Abuse Bill Responds To Tide Of Sadness And Fear
In response to stories that seem to be on the rise in communities across the state — stories of parents trying to revive children after a heroin overdose, of young people seeking treatment their...
View ArticleWorkers Brace For Life After Vermont Yankee
It’s been almost a year since the announcement that Entergy Vermont Yankee would close at the end of 2014. At the time of the announcement, the plant employed 632 people, at salaries well above the...
View ArticleFinding Inspiration From The 60s In A Connecticut Landfill
The writer David K. Leff has published poetry and non-fiction, and now a novel using verse. “Finding the Last Hungry Heart” is the next book in our Summer Fiction series. In it, we meet Caleb Dempster,...
View ArticleFoley Still Ahead of McKinney As Primary In Connecticut Approaches
Connecticut’s primary is Tuesday. The big race to watch is between Republican gubernatorial candidates Tom Foley, a businessman from Greenwich and Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, from Fairfield....
View ArticleAfter 50 Years, Folk-Blues Singer Chris Smither Is ‘Still on the Levee’
Blues and folk singer Chris Smither has traveled far from his Louisiana roots. He left New Orleans in his early twenties to join the 60′s folk scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts — where the...
View ArticleConnecticut Race For Governor To Focus On Jobs, Taxes, Economy
Republicans in Connecticut this week made their pick for governor. GOP primary voters chose the former U.S. ambassador to Ireland, Tom Foley, to face the incumbent Democratic governor, Dannel Malloy....
View ArticleIn Chris Bohjalian’s New Novel, A Story Of Surviving Disaster In Vermont
Vermont author Chris Bohjalian’s latest novel, Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, is about a nuclear meltdown and a young girl. Emily Shephard has a deep love for the poetry of Amherst native Emily...
View ArticleNovelist Mixes Middle Eastern Politics with Family Drama
A gay couple from Northampton, Massachusetts, gets caught in the cross-hairs of Middle Eastern politics in Judith Frank’s new novel, “All I Love and Know.” After one character’s brother and...
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Study Keeps A Close Eye On Backyard Birds in Western Mass.
Most studies about birds focus on wild habitat. But this summer researchers from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington, D.C., are focusing on backyards. The study, called Neighborhood...
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