Author: Swan Island Maine

T. Blen Parker is an emerging author whose native state of Maine has family roots reaching from Blinn Hill in Dresden, to Swan Island in the Kennebec River, onto historic Monhegan Island off Port Clyde. SWAN ISLAND in the KENNEBEC was her first historical novel, invites readers to enter the world of the isolated island, where the Village of Perkins Township was incorporated and thriving in 1847, but abandoned in the late 1930s, when ferry service was discontinued. Ferry service has once again been discontinued by the State of Maine in 2022, but access is free with personal watercraft. The historic novel begins with the arrival of Englishmen at Sabino in 1607, encompassing the time period of the first contact between coastal explorers and fur traders with Abenaki natives in the 1600’s, (who named the island Sowan-gen-Swan, translated as tribe or gen from the island of eagles), forward into the twenty-first century. Swan Island sits in the middle of the Kennebec River, between the rural towns of Dresden and Richmond, Maine, sixteen miles upriver from the mouth of the Kennebec in Bath. Showcasing the small, self-sufficient community of Perkins Township, the book proudly boasts of how lumber, ships filled with ice, and cargo holds filled with Swan Island bricks and river rocks sailed across the oceans touching every continent in the world, returning with spices from far away lands for residents of Richmond & Dresden. To taste the flavor of the book Swan Island in the Kennebec, read short stories, “Thanksgiving,” “Life On Swango,” and “Chewing Surprise,” in the 2011,2012, 2013 and 2014 Anthologies published by Maine’s Goose River Press of Waldoboro. The 2015 Goose River Anthology presents her Little Red Brick Schoolhouse poem, a tribute to her 5th and 6th-grade teacher, about her attendance at the one-room schoolhouse in Dresden, now the home of the Schoolhouse Museum and Dresden Historical Society. In 2017, Maine publisher, Goose River Press added the poem about the Kennebec River entitled: "Queen Kennebecca". Terri's second book is a children's adventure story, illustrated with memory paintings created by the author who lived as the sole family on island, with her grandparents being mostly home-schooled on the island until beginning high school in the 1960's when she moved to live with parents and graduated in 1969. Find CINNAMON'S SWAN ISLAND ADVENTURES on AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, SHERMAN'S BOOKSTORES OF MAINE, or at several Maine Coastal shops. MWPA AUTHOR LOCATOR: http://find.mainewriters.org/writers/t_blen_parker facebook.com/tblen.parker e-mail: swangomaine@gmail.com wordpress website: www.SWANISLANDMAINE.COM