Monica Wood, bestselling author of ‘When We Were the Kennedys’ to speak at Bates College

LEWISTON — Monica Wood, author of a popular memoir about growing up in a small Maine town in the early 1960s, will read from and discuss her book “When We Were the Kennedys” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 28, in Bates College’s Olin Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required — visit https://monicawoodbates.eventbrite.com/. For more information, call 207-786-6067.

“When We Were the Kennedys” is the story of how a family, a town and then a nation mourn and find the strength to move on. Living in Mexico, Maine in 1963, the Wood family is much like its close neighbors, Catholics and immigrants dependent on the fathers’ wages from the Oxford Paper Company.

But when Monica’s father suddenly dies on his way to work, her mother and the four deeply connected Wood daughters are set adrift.

Wood examines the iconic status of the Kennedys during the 1960s and the Maine politics that played out in parallel to the national scene. Figures such as U.S. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, a member of the Bates class of 1936, figure in the background of Wood’s memoir.

Winner of the 2013 Maine Literary Award for “When We Were the Kennedys,” Wood explained her storytelling roots: “My father and my mother’s parents came from Prince Edward Island in Canada, and brought with them the island tradition of storytelling,” she said.

“Although my sisters and I were the first generation in the family to go to college, I think of my background as a literary one. My father had a lilting island brogue and beautiful grammar; the notion that stories had to be told in a certain way was something I learned early. My grandfather used to sing long, melodramatic, novelistic ballads, another island tradition.”