This well-researched book highlights the dramatic life of the Merrimack River, from the colorful days of the Native Americans to its current status as one of the most scenic recreational waterways in New England. The 117-mile river runs from central New Hampshire to Newburyport, Massachusetts, where it meets the Atlantic. Here the Coast Guard was born, and colonial trade thrived. The Industrial Revolution was launched in the riverside mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, and Manchester, New Hampshire. The science of clean drinking water was developed in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the first successful labor action also took place in Lawrence. Thousands of immigrants worked in mills along the Merrimack, and this book tells their riveting stories. In the 70s, the once-filthy Merrimuck was cleaned up to serve again as one of the most popular waterways in New England. And the Merrimack is still an essential resource. It serves as the source of drinking water for a half-million people. Many have seen part of the Merrimack River, but this unique book provides info and images about all sectors of this great waterway.

Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki warriors in service to the French raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed twenty-seven men, women, and children, and took thirteen captives, including thirty-nine-year-old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. A short distance from the village, one of the warriors murdered the squalling infant by dashing her head against a tree. After a forced march of nearly one hundred miles, Duston and two companions were transferred to a smaller band of Abenaki, who camped on a tiny island located at the junction of the Merrimack and Contoocook Rivers, several miles north of present day Concord, New Hampshire. This was the height of King William’s War, both a war of terror and a religious contest, with English Protestantism vying for control of the New World with French Catholicism. After witnessing her infant’s murder, Duston resolved to get even. Two weeks into their captivity, Duston and her companions, a fifty-one-year-old woman and a twelve-year-old boy, moved among the sleeping Abenaki with tomahawks and knives, killing two men, two women, and six children. After returning to the bloody scene alone to scalp their victims, Duston and the others escaped down the Merrimack River in a stolen canoe. They braved treacherous waters and the constant threat of attack and recapture, returning to tell their story and collect a bounty for the scalps. Was Hannah Duston the prototypical feminist avenger, or the harbinger of the Native American genocide? In this meticulously researched and riveting narrative, bestselling author Jay Atkinson sheds new light on the early struggle for North America.

C.C. Carole has visited some of the most historic places in the Merrimack Valley and has found them buzzing with the ghostly energy and presence of those who came before. Join C.C. as she recounts her adventures and paints a historical backdrop of the regions haunts. Discover the legend of the Pennacook chief Passaconaway, said to be over one hundred years old and possessed of magic that could make water burn and trees dance. Investigate the eerie sounds and shadowy figures reported in the old safe houses and tunnels of the Underground Railroad. Visit the Rosewood Country Inn in Bradford and its lingering spirits of glamorous Hollywood stars, and listen for the echoes of toe-tapping performers at Canobie Lake Parks Dancehall Theatre. As C.C. treks across New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the regions historic spirits reveal themselves in surprising ways.

In the continental United States, rivers serve to connect state to state, interior with exterior, the past to the present, but they also divide places and peoples from one another. These connections and divisions have given rise to a diverse body of literature that explores American nature, ranging from travel accounts of seventeenth-century Puritan colonists to magazine articles by twenty-first-century enthusiasts of extreme sports. Using pivotal American writings to determine both what literature can tell us about rivers and, conversely, how rivers help us think about the nature of literature, The Meaning of Rivers introduces readers to the rich world of flowing water and some of the different ways in which American writers have used rivers to understand the world through which these waters flow. Embracing a hybrid, essayistic form—part literary theory, part cultural history, and part fieldwork—The Meaning of Rivers connects the humanities to other disciplines and scholarly work to the land. Whether developing a theory of palindromes or reading works of American literature as varied as Henry David Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and James Dickey’s Deliverance, McMillin urges readers toward a transcendental retracing of their own interpretive encounters. The nature of texts and the nature of “nature” require diverse and versatile interpretation; interpretation requires not only depth and concentration but also imaginative thinking, broad-mindedness, and engaged connection-making. By taking us upstream as well as down, McMillin draws attention to the potential of rivers for improving our sense of place and time.