I write to tell fascinating stories about very different life experiences. My first two novels, Telling Stone and Bonfires Before Glaciers, are set more than 23,000 years apart!
I introduce them to you here, and hope you become immersed.
New from Scott Dickerson!
Millions of Americans protested in the 1960s, but only two dynamited trees on their university campus. By creating a scene of war’s devastation, Will hopes to mobilize more anti-war activists. Yet the flag draped caskets continue to return. Frustrated, alienated and aimless, he wanders. Along the way, he finds land to love, at first alone, then with a dynamic woman who recruits Will into the effort to save a wild Maine island threatened by development. Bonfires before Glaciers is a novel about commitment, sorrow, growth, love, and joy.
I lived through the same times, in similar places, and engaged in anti-war, economic justice, and environmental activism. Though I write of what I know, what I have observed, Bonfires Before Glaciers is fiction…however, the value of protecting Sears Island from industrial development is based on fact and urgency. For the past twenty years, I have worked with many others to conserve it.
Scott’s first novel:
23,500 ago, along the northern coast of Spain, Paleolithic people created a revolution in what we call art. Painting and carving on the stone walls of caves, they tell something about the iconic animals and events of their hunter-gatherer lives. But what did they tell? Why did they make these fabulous images? What did it mean to them? Archaeology tells us how the images were created, but questions about motivation, meaning, and thinking can only be answered by our own imaginations. Telling Stone is the story of Okyo, his band’s way of life, and what and why he painted. It is also an exploration of how an artist, then or now, might think while creating art.
Both of my parents were artists, so I grew up among art folio books; some of their illustrations included the cave art of Northern Spain and Southwestern France. My interest and imagination were fired when young. Later, I created furniture sculpted by my mind, eyes and hands, expressing my own artistic impulse. In travels and homesteading, I have been a hunter-gatherer in fields and forests of North America. Okyo and I are kin.
About the Author
I write for the fun of crafting words and the satisfaction I feel when they gather thoughts into clarity. Bonfires before Glaciers is my second novel; Telling Stone, my first. I wrote my non-fiction book, To Save a River, while I worked as a conservation biologist to protect a Maine River for its endangered Atlantic Salmon. During my first career, designing and making furniture, I wrote articles for the journal Fine Woodworking. Throughout, I have lived in locales and absorbed experiences as diverse as my writing.