David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Echoes from Walden: Poems Inspired by Thoreau's Life and Work

Homebound Publications | 2021 | 245 pages | ISBN 978-1-0880-0438-8

See Henry David Thoreau in a Whole New Way: Through the Eyes of Poets

Icon of environmental consciousness, independent living, and social justice, Henry David Thoreau has probably generated more poems about him than any other secular individual.  Beginning with his contemporaries and continuing today, they illustrate our changing views of the man in a passionate form of expression rich in emotion and meaning.  A whole library of books has been written about Thoreau, but maybe poetry best explains why his legacy is both enduring and endearing.  From Louisa May Alcott to William Butler Yeats to Mary Oliver, readers will find poems in three centuries that are both moving and thought provoking.

What People are Saying About this Book

"Including poetry across the centuries, Echoes from Walden demonstrates the lasting significance of Thoreau's life's work.  By turns retrospective and forward-looking, socially engaged and deeply connective, these poems verify what we knew to be true: the man who retreated briefly to a pond contemplated thoughts long relevant to us all."

Rochelle L. Johnson, President The Thoreau Society

"David Leff’s anthology of poems offers not a new window into Thoreau but dozens of them, each a dazzling refraction of Thoreau’s own luminous words. The selections in this volume range widely in both time and theme, but they share with Thoreau a commitment to the precisely observed detail and a predilection for the wild. If Thoreau’s great gift was to help his readers see the world anew, this volume makes us keenly aware of how many different lives Thoreau has touched across the decades and around the world, how far and wide the light reflected from Walden Pond has traveled."

John J. Kucich, former editor of The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies

 

"This is a book long overdue, since it presents a rich trove of poetry written in response to Thoreau’s uniquely poetic life. It is a compendium of work by some of the finest poets writing today and yesterday. Read it with solace when the world is too much with you."

 

Rennie McQuilkin, Connecticut Poet Laureate emeritus

 

Available Wherever Books are Sold, Including Homebound Publications: https://homeboundpublications.square.site/product/echoes-from-walden/146?cs=true&cst=custom

New England Nature: Centuries of Writing on the Wonder and Beauty of the Land

David K. Leff & Eric D. Lehman, editors

Globe Pequot / 2020 / 272 pages / ISBN 978-1-4930-5218-9

Rediscover an Iconic Landscape Time After Time

Since its founding four hundred years ago, New England has been a vital source of nature writing. Maybe it’s the diversity of landscapes huddled so close together or the marriage of nature and culture in a relatively small, six-state region. Maybe it’s the regenerative powers of the ecosystem in a place of repeated exploitations. Or maybe we have simply been thinking about our relationship with the natural world longer than everyone.

If all successive nature writing is a footnote to Henry David Thoreau, then New England has a strong claim to being the birthplace of the genre. But there are, as the sixty entries in this anthology demonstrate, many other regional voices that extol the wonders and beauty of the outdoors, explore local ecology, and call for environmental sustainability.

Available Wherever Books are Sold including the publisher at: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781493052189/New-England-Nature-Centuries-of-Writing-on-the-Wonder-and-Beauty-of-the-Land

 

Doppleganger: A Memoir of Mirrored Selves

Homebound Publications | 2020 | 80 pages | ISBN 978-1-947003-74-3

If you've ever been mistaken for someone else or wondered if you might be, you should read this book. 

Imagine being haunted by doubles. Picture yourself repeatedly mistaken for others, both celebrities and unknowns. A double infiltrates your family life altering close relationships. Another brings your reputation and career into question. Shadowed or second selves have long blossomed in legend and stories, but in David K. Leff’s world they leap to life, intruding in unexpected ways. If you’ve never been scarred by a doppelganger, but especially if you have, you will want to join Leff as he struggles to maintain his equanimity in a realm of mirrored selves.

What People are Saying About this Book

“Both in his re-creations of familial and public trials with confusions of identity with other ‘doubles,’ our David Leff is able to meet and be open-hearted and open-minded with his two significant doubles. And here hangs the tale: for this reader, having a double may well be the trickster universe’s way of suggesting that we are not as singular as we think, that we come to know and appreciate who we are by way of others, whether we look like them or not.”

--Margaret Gibson, Poet Laureate of Connecticut

“In a world of billions intent on submerging our identities into the whole, David K. Leff makes an eloquent plea for individuality.”

–Eric D. Lehman, author of Great Pan is Dead

"His scholarship in wresting from his own struggle a sculpture of the shared human frailty of self doubt is an accomplishment of clarity and intellect.  His endeavor speaks for itself."

Gregg Grinspan, MD

Available Wherever Books are Sold, Including Homebound Publications:https://homeboundpublications.com/product/doppelganger-by-david-k-leff/

The Breach: Voices Haunting a New England Mill Town

Homebound Publications | 2019 | 162 pages | ISBN 11947003402

SILVER MEDAL winner for BEST NORTHEAST REGIONAL FICTION from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), GRAND PRIZE SHORT LIST and HONORABLE MENTION for POETRY from the Eric Hoffer Book Award

Imagine walls could actually talk as a New England factory community faces closure of its signature mill due to environmental contamination and foreign competition.  This story of politics, family life, competing redevelopment schemes, gossiping locals, and a mother fiercely protecting her children is told in the voice of common objects—from the church steeple clock to a Bridgeport milling machine to an umbrella.  They witness a bit of drinking, sex, a suicide, and the hopes and dreams of the human beings around them.  How did these everyday things find their voice?  Readers may never again look at the ordinary objects around them the same.

What People are Saying about this Book

“What a trove of small town Americana David Leff has given us!”

Rennie McQuilkin, CT Poet Laureate (2015-2018)

“This is among the most original and compelling works I’ve ever read."

John Stanizzi, author of Hallelujah Time and Ecstasy Among Ghosts

“Leff, deserves kudos for bringing such striking and original material to light.”

Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-2015)

The Breach is a book to savor.

Susan Merrow, former Sierra Club National Board of Directors president

For More about The Breach go to: https://davidkleff.typepad.com/home/2018/11/explore-the-mysteries-of-the-breach.html

Available Wherever Books are Sold Including
Homebound Publications at https://homeboundpublications.square.site/product/the-breach-by-david-k-leff/84?cs=true

Discover Terranexus!

Terranexus: Connection and Meaning in Ordinary Places

Connect with ordinary places close to home. Discover inspiration and beauty nearby through the art of deep travel. Intrigue and wonder beckon just beyond  your doorstep!

Homebound Publications | 2018 | 80 pages | ISBN 194700395X

What People are Saying about this Book
“Reading David’s beautifully written essay will make you realize that the wonders of nature lie right beyond your doorstep. So grab your kids, turn off your cells phones, and enjoy them.”
–Gina McCarthy, former U. S. EPA Administrator

“The questions to which Leff returns in this elegant sequence of essays are how and why we may come to love a place, and how such love may promote personal, ecological, and social health. These issues are made concrete for his readers by descriptions of walks into certain landscapes that have grounded his own thinking. Like him, we are drawn deeper into the meaning of conservation by the intoxication of ‘spicy spruce air’ on the Appalachian Trail, the profusion of birdlife above an old landfill.”
–John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home

“Leff has given us a permission slip and a directive: go forth and see. Travel local, travel deep. See the beauty in ‘hard-used places.’ Canoe polluted and pillaged rivers. Everything ordinary is beautiful. Go forth and make your own terranexus, your own ‘profound connection’ to your home ground. Celebrate your place in earth—there is no other like it.”
–Howard Mansfield, author of Dwelling in Possibility

Available Wherever Books are Sold Including
Pbk: Amazon • Barnes & Noble • Indiebound.org
eBook: Kindle (Coming Soon) • Nook • iBooks • Kobo and from Homebound Publications at https://homeboundpublications.com/terranexus-by-david-k-leff/

Canoeing Maine's Legendary Allagash: Thoreau, Romance, and Survival of the Wild

Winner of two Silver Medals

Memoir, Nautilus Book Awards

Regional Nonfiction, Independent Publisher Book Awards

Homebound Publications | 2016 | 180 pages | ISBN 978-1-938846-33-5

Paperback at $17.95, also in Hardcover, Audio Book in early 2017 | Order Your Copy Today

Meet Henry David Thoreau, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and other intrepid explorers as you travel northern Maine’s  rugged woods and waters.  In a wild country of ledge and trees that stubbornly resists encroaching civilization, find a young couple padding through the trials, triumphs, and sheer mental and physical exhaustion of wilderness travel severely testing their ability to get along and even complete the trip.  Fill your ears with roaring rapids and yodeling loons.  Smell pungent spruce and dank swamps.  Encounter moose and majestic sunrises cloaked in morning mist.  A few pages, and you will find yourself deep in the evergreen forest.

What People Are Saying About This Book

“If you have been on a canoe trip, you know the adventure is the center of a complex venn diagram of relationship, history, and a testing of character and adaptability. David captures this and more in an artful way that will make you dream of hitting the water to commune with nature and your very soul.”

—Walter Opuszynski, Northern Forest Canoe Trail, Trail Director 

“Readers will hang onto the back of David Leff’s roiling canoe in this story. He steers through the early fractures of a relationship amid the beauties and terror of a wilder Allagash, and skillfully adds in details of the explorers and exploiters who floated before him. Refreshingly honest.  A very strong narrative voice!”

—Christine Woodside, Editor-in-Chief, Appalachia

 

Maple Sugaring

Maple Sugaring, Wesleyan University Press
2015 | 220 pages | Cooking| Hardcover ISBN 978-0-8195-7569-2 | Purchase 

Maple Sugaring gives readers an intimate look at the art and science of America’s favorite sweet. These stories, told by real-life sugarmakers, reveal how this ancient industry has persisted into the twenty-firstcentury. Thanks to the newest technology, and patience, New England sugarmakers are still keeping it real. A former maple sugarmaker and board member of the Connecticut Maple Syrup Producer’s Association, David Leff takes us on a journey into the very heart of New England’s character. Along the way he talks with the sugar gurus, who share their expertise, insights, and anecdotes about their experiences in the business. What makes maple sugaring such a beloved tradition? Is it marketing savvy, family tradition, or something deeper—and harder to tap? This book is for anyone with a sweet tooth who is curious about the science behind the sweetness, or who simply enjoys a good story. Maple Sugaring is full of wisdom, quirky characters, and recipes.

Ask At Your Favorite Bookstore Or Order Your Copy Today

What People Are Saying About This Book

“From heartwarming family history to the latest trends in sugaring technology, from traditional recipes to new culinary trends, and from maple syrup’s natural health benefits to the benefits of sugarmaking as a labor of love, Maple Sugaringcleverly captures what’s best of this time-honored New England tradition. Clearly, David Leff shares our passion.”—Mike Girard, Girard’s Sugarhouse, Heath, Massachusetts

“David Leff dives into a vat of maple syrup and comes out with a brilliant book on sugaring. His practical know-how and reverence for sugaring are matched only by his skill at depicting the kaleidoscopic interaction of character, place, science, and passion that has created the New England culture we know and love. Tree by tree, shack by shack, he builds a world and illustrates it from every angle. Like John McPhee before him, Leff has turned cultural investigation into an art.”—Eric D. Lehman, author of A History of Connecticut Food

“David Leff provides an excellent account of the maple industry and the incredible sugarmakers who bring us this all-natural sweetener every year. Anyone who loves pure maple syrup and the rural lifestyle of the Northeast will greatly enjoy this book.”—Michael Farrell, author of The Sugarmaker’s Companion: An Integrated Approach to Producing Syrup from Maple, Birch, and Walnut Trees.

Finding the Last Hungry Heart

Finding the Land Hungry Heart, Homebound Publications
2013 | 180 pages | Fiction| ISBN  978-1938846236 | Purchase | Kindle

Come to the confluence of the present and the 1960s.  Caleb Dempster, a disillusioned refugee from that turbulent era makes his living operating a municipal landfill, dealing with the waste of a society he’d once strived to change.  One night Dempster catches some teens climbing the landfill fence in the hope of spotting a bear that’s feeding on the garbage.  The kids’ interest in Dempster’s past, including a wild cross-country hitchhiking trip, enables him to see some value in experiences that had only tormented him with disappointment.  Following some hardball small town politics and violence, the kids enable Dempster to triumph by finding value in what he had thought was a wasted youth of unfulfilled promises.