Finding True North: A History of One Small Corner of the Adirondacks

Part memoir and part history, this book by Fran Yardley takes us to one small corner of the Adirondacks in upstate New York, to an old carry club that had its heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She moves there with her husband, whose family owns the land and the buildings, in the late 1960s, and they work on reviving it to what it once was, hoping to bring people back to the serenity of nature. At the same time, she gives us the history of the people who founded it originally, the people who lived there, and the communities around it that supported it and thrived because of the tourists. This book will apply to people who like memoirs, especially ones that are a reflection of the radical times of the 1960s, when everyone felt that things would change. But it will also appeal to people who like local histories, especially local histories of places that are largely ignored, such as the Adirondacks. A mixture of modern stories and historical research, Fran Yardley’s book has done a wonderful job weaving them together to tell the story of this corner of the world.