Once Upon a Time on the Banks takes place in

Mattagash, the same backwoods Maine village

that provided the setting for The Funeral Makers

--a first novel celebrated by The New York Times

Book Review as "hilariously irreverent, comic,

tragic, and lyrical." Cathie Pelletier s new book

opens on the first day of spring in 1969, the day

Amy Joy Lawler--descendant of Protestant

settlers, granddaughter of a missionary to China,

daughter of a schoolteacher who ended his life in

suicide--has announced her impending marriage

to a young man of French-Canadian descent.

Amy Joy s mother, Sicily, has taken to her bed in

protest. Across town, the wives of the two no-

account Gifford brothers have begun a blood

feud precipitated when Goldie Gifford cornered

the market on Christmas tree lights at a post-

holiday sale; and the Gifford brothers themselves,

Pike and Vinal, are looking forward to new oppor-

tunities for hubcap theft, disability-benefit fraud,

and soap-opera monitoring. In Portland, eight

hours drive downstate but light-years away, Amy

Joy s Aunt Pearl is longing to return to Mattagash;

her husband Marvin Ivy is experiencing a supply

shortage in his funeral business; their son Marvin,

Jr., is having an affair with Monique Tessier, a

bosomy, violet-eyed secretary at the funeral

home; his wife is looped on Valium and hooked

on The Price is Right; and their son Marvin III, has

dropped out of school and been busted for

Driving While Intoxicated.

What happens when this lively assortment of

characters (and more) comes together by the

Mattagash River for Amy Joy s wedding is the

story of Once Upon a Time on the Banks--a book

about families, about heritage, about place, that

combines ribald humor with tenderness and a

rare breadth of vision. Cathie Pelletier is that

rare thing, a real storyteller: one whose literary