Lawson, Dorie McCullough 1968–

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Lawson, Dorie McCullough 1968–

PERSONAL:

Born 1968, in West Tisbury, MA; daughter of David (a writer and historian) and Rosalee McCullough; married T. Allan Lawson (an artist); children: four. Education: Middlebury College, B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Rockport, ME. Agent—Soldier's Creek Associates, P.O. Box 477, Rockport, ME 04856; fax: (207) 236-7441. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Soldier's Creek Associates (lecture agency), Rockport, ME, founder and owner.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children, foreword by David McCullough, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2004.

Along Comes a Stranger (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dorie McCullough Lawson, the daughter of celebrated historian David McCullough, is the editor of the critically acclaimed anthology Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children, as well as Along Comes a Stranger, her debut novel. Posterity, ‘a timeless collection of family thoughts, hopes, and dreams,’ observed School Library Journal contributor Peggy Bercher, contains some one hundred letters from sixty-eighty notable individuals, including Thomas Jefferson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ansel Adams, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Albert Einstein. Lawson, the owner of a lecture agency that represents authors, developed the concept for Posterity years before its publication and originally offered the project to her father, who is one of her clients. When he declined, Lawson decided to tackle the book herself. ‘I never had a moment, never a moment of wishing I weren't doing this,’ she told Nis Kildegaard in the Vineyard Gazette Online. ‘I loved it. I couldn't wait to get through my day job to get to this."

The letters in Posterity are organized thematically into chapters such as ‘Continuity,’ ‘Strength of Character,’ and ‘The Pleasures of Life.’ Each letter, containing the original text, is accompanied by an italicized pull- quote and a brief introduction to the author. The tone of the missives ranges from contentious to heartwarming, and many are studded with humor; Groucho Marx adopts the voice of the family dog in a message to his son, and President Theodore Roosevelt implores his daughter to avoid betting at the racetrack. As Kildegaard observed, the ‘amalgam of treasures amid the minutiae of everyday family life is part of what gives these letters their power to move the reader, to charm and to surprise.’ ‘Spanning three centuries,’ wrote a contributor in Publishers Weekly, ‘this is a meticulously edited collection, enlightening and entertaining."

Along Comes a Stranger centers on Kate Colter, a native New Englander living in the isolated town of Hayden, Wyoming, with her paleontologist husband, George, and their daughter, Clara. Restless and lonely, the Bowdoin-educated Kate finds a kindred spirit in Tom Baxter, the charming, intellectual new boyfriend of her widowed mother-in-law. When elements of Tom's back story ring false, however, Kate becomes convinced that he is really Whitey Bulger, a notorious Boston gangster on the run from the authorities. ‘Told in a deceptively simple first-person narrative, the novel winds the reader into an increasingly narrow path of suspicion,’ remarked Susan Wilson in the Martha's Vineyard Times. Wilson added that Lawson's ‘telling of this story reads in some ways like a good phone conversation,’ and described the protagonist as ‘confiding, letting the reader know just enough about herself to keep the story moving, unembarrassed by the increasingly wild suppositions she's making.’ Reviewing Along Comes a Stranger in Booklist, Carol Haggas deemed the work ‘an agile blend of keenly perceptive domestic drama and sharply escalating suspense."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Bangor Daily News, May 7, 2007, Alicia Anstead, ‘Along Comes a Stranger."

Booklist, March 15, 2007, Carol Haggas, review of Along Comes a Stranger, p. 25.

Library Journal, March 1, 2004, Charles C. Nash, review of Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children, p. 78.

Martha's Vineyard Times, April 19, 2007, Susan Wilson, ‘Who Is the Stranger in Town,’ review of Along Comes a Stranger.

Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, May 13, 2007, Lloyd Ferriss, ‘Danger Simmers, Catches Fire as Mystery Unfolds,’ review of Along Comes a Stranger.

Publishers Weekly, March 29, 2004, review of Posterity, p. 52; February 19, 2007, review of Along Comes a Stranger, p. 146.

Saturday Evening Post, September-October, 2004, review of Posterity, p. 14.

School Library Journal, July, 2004, Peggy Bercher, review of Posterity, p. 133.

USA Today, April 29, 2004, Bob Minzesheimer, ‘Posterity Posts Letters from Parent to Child,’ p. 4.