The Rochester Public Library is pleased to announce a new program called In the Evil Day, sponsored by NH Humanities to Go, a nonprofit organization that offers high-quality cultural programming to the public at a minimal cost to the host. Every year, New Hampshire Humanities sponsors 500+ Humanities to Go programs that are free and open to the public.
Program Description:
On August 19, 1997, in little Colebrook, New Hampshire, a 62-year-old carpenter named Carl Drega, a man with long-simmering property rights grievances, murdered state troopers Scott Phillips and Les Lord at a traffic stop in a supermarket parking lot. Then Drega stole Phillips’s cruiser and drove downtown to settle some old scores. By the end of the day three more were dead, Drega among them, and four wounded. Occurring on the eve of America’s current plague of gun violence, this tragic event made headlines all over the world and shocked New Hampshire out of a previous innocence. Touching on facets of North Country history, local governance, law enforcement, gun violence, and the human spirit, Richard Adams Carey describes a community that was never a passive victim but rather a brave and resilient survivor.
Presenter info:
Richard Adams Carey is a writer whose byline has appeared in magazines ranging from Alaska to Yankee. He is the author of four award-winning books of literary nonfiction, including Raven’s Children: An Alaskan Culture at Twilight (a New York Public Library Book to Remember) and Against the Tide: The Fate of the New England Fisherman (the New Hampshire Literary Prize for Nonfiction). A Connecticut native, Harvard graduate, and long-time New Hampshire resident, he has taught school in the Alaskan Bush, odd-jobbed on a Western ranch, worked on fishing boats, tracked caviar smugglers, served as president of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, and has taught in Southern New Hampshire University’s MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction program.
The Rochester Public Library welcomes the public to attend on Wednesday, August 23rd at 6:00 pm, in the Community Room.