Local author Jeff Foltz will be at the Owl and the Turtle Bookshop in Camden on Friday, June 29, from 1 – 3 p.m. to sign copies of his novel “Birkebeiner: A Story of Motherhood and War.”

As we plotted and planned our first travel columns, we were excited to receive an invitation from Fred Forsley — owner of Shipyard Brewery and a sponsor of our website — to be his guests at his Inn on Peaks Island. Our column about that experience — our very first column — appeared on Jan. 16, 2011, when we wrote, “We plan to return to the Inn on Peaks Island during the spring bird migration.”

I picked up “Gone Girl” because the novel is set along the Mississippi River in Missouri and the plot sounded intriguing. I put it down two days later, bleary-eyed and oh-so-satisfied after reading a story that left me surprised, disgusted, and riveted by its twists and turns.

The mythical village of Starvation Lake, Mich., is an authentic realm of piney woods, deadman’s curves, working-class bars, lakefront cottages, friendly neighbors, town drunks, rampant gossip and small-town cops where almost everyone is obsessed with the fate of a junior hockey team called The River Rats.