By Jodi Hausen,Staff Writer
In his latest book, Bill Roorbach writes with joy and insight about his corner of rural western Maine.

FARMINGTON – The locales in Bill Roorbach’s newest book will be recognizable to residents of this western Maine town and, though some of the locals may seem familiar, they are a fictional collage, according to the author.

In “Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey,” Roorbach represents the archetypal stalwart, self-sufficient Mainah in Earl Pomeroy – an aggregate of locals whose identity is “impenetrable,” Roorbach said Wednesday.

Pomeroy’s disdain for the author, whom he refers to as “professor,” shows as he often serves as Roorbach’s nemesis.

“Anytime I’m waxing rhapsodic, there’s Earl to squish me like an irritating little black fly,” he said.

Sitting on a large rock on the iconic stream behind his Farmington home, Roorbach stops mid-sentence to identify the call of a catbird or watch a crawfish scamper by on the stream bottom. His love for the natural elements and people of this rural corner of the world is obvious.

“The book is meant to be a joyful paean to Farmington,” he said as Wally, the younger of two dogs who also play roles in his book, splashes in the stream. “It’s a joyful look at a beloved stream.”

Making it look easy

“I love being out here,” he said after pausing to listen to a frog. “You can find the whole world in this little stream.”

The book was an excuse to learn as much as he could about the area where he’s lived with his painter wife, Juliet, for about 30 years, he said. He looked at the stream “through many different lenses” as he wrote.

“It’s not meant as journalism, it’s meant as a big poem. It invents its own rules,” he said about the events and characters he portrays.

A melding of nature writing and short odysseys that occur along Temple Stream, it follows a sequence of seasons, and it tracks from the stream’s mouth at the Sandy River as Roorbach travels it upstream by foot, canoe and skis. He combines poetic depictions of nature with amusing and poignant interactions with characters that, though perhaps fictional, will be recognizable as typical self-sustaining natives, leery of flatlanders.

“He really blends genres well, which is difficult to do, but he makes it look easy in the book,” Kenny Brechner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers said last week. The bookstore will be hosting Roorbach’s first stop on his book tour, which starts Aug. 4. The book, Roorbach’s eighth, will be released by Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, July 26.

Tending bar to teaching

Roorbach, 51, grew up predominantly in New Canaan, Conn. He has worked as a musician, bartender, carpenter, plumber and handyman, and even did a brief stint on a cattle ranch, according to his Web site biography at www.billroorbach.com. With a master’s in fine arts, he has taught at the University of Maine at Farmington, Ohio State University and is currently the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross. He has also won numerous awards for his writing.

Readers seeking to expand their vocabulary will also appreciate Roorbach’s sometimes-elusive wording.

“Roorbach’s obvious delight in obscure phrasing … should please literate stream walkers who enjoy a good browse in their dictionaries after a day’s wander in the woods,” wrote Betsy Lerner, in a May 30 review for “Publishers Weekly.”

But Roorbach seems to revel in the more moving moments of his latest book.

“There’s always a bittersweet moment when you’re talking about rural life,” Roorbach said. “Despite that, there’s a real beautiful story to tell.”