Almanack Contributor Betsy Kepes

Betsy Kepes is a regular commentator on new books at North Country Public Rafdio. She lives in Pierrepont, New York where she teaches piano to children and adults and performs with the Little River Trio.


Sunday, April 9, 2017

Infamous Adirondack Murder Revisited

Chester GilletteIt’s been over one hundred years since a search party found Grace Brown’s body in the bottom of Big Moose Lake, an overturned rowboat floating nearby. In 1906 the face of the man who walked away from that remote bay would become familiar to many Americans as he sat slouched in a chair at his murder trial in Herkimer. The local and national press wrote front-page stories about Chester Gillette, the handsome young man who murdered his pregnant girlfriend so he could rise up the social ladder.

Craig Brandon has a section in the new edition of his book called The Murder That Will Never Die, and certainly for him as a writer this is true. Brandon first published Murder in the Adirondacks in 1986, and the book sold well. When North Country Books asked if he’d be interested in writing a revised edition he jumped at the chance. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, November 26, 2016

Place Names of the High Peaks Wilderness

erik schlimmerErik Schlimmer is a man who likes to make lists, and check them off. After he climbed all the highest peaks in the Northeast he decided to climb all the less-than-high peaks of the Adirondacks, hundreds of them. Then he designed and hiked the Trans Adirondack Trail, a route that bisects the Park north-south from Blue Line to Blue Line.

With his beaver-like energy and red-squirrel enthusiasm Schlimmer has also written four books about the Adirondacks. The best of them, My Adirondacks, Ten Stories from Twenty Years, contains personal essays that are funny, thoughtful, and well-written. It recently won the Adirondack Center for Writing’s first prize for memoir. » Continue Reading.



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