From its wilderness source to its meeting with the Ausable River, Styles Brook is scarcely five miles long, yet within its scenic, rugged watershed, award-winning author Lorraine Duvall has discovered a lifetime of stories that characterize the Adirondack condition.

In Where the Styles Brook Waters Flow: The Place I Call Home, Duvall writes of coming to know and love the Styles Brook Valley, and describes the delicate balance of privacy and interconnectivity that is the way of life in rural areas. In this book, her latest contribution to Adirondack lore, she continues to illustrate the area’s vibrant and fascinating life.

Styles Brook is a small but consequential valley where both people and nature have found a sense of place. It is home to The Glen, a collection of sweeping, mountain-encircled plains where farmers worked the soil, and also to a gateway of the wildlife corridor known as the Split Rock Wildway in the eastern Adirondack Mountains, a safe haven for migrating creatures.

Céline Keating, author of The Stark Beauty of Last Things, says Duvall’s work is “a love song to ‘The Glen’ and to the richness and importance of the Styles Brook Watershed. Like a river, the book flows from one facet to another—from its history, to a modern land use controversy, to an in-depth look at the local impact of Hurricane Irene.”

Noted Adirondack historian Phil Terrie, author of the seminal book Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks, wrote the Foreword and says, “In the Adirondacks, we have many opportunities to conclude that human alterations of what nature has provided might seem appropriate in the short term but don’t necessarily solve our problems…. Lorraine Duvall’s book on the Styles Brook valley invites us to take that long view and see what it can teach us.”

Award winning Author Duvall’s three previous books are, Finding A Woman’s Place: The Story of a 1970s Feminist Collective in the Adirondacks , And I Know Too Much to Pretend, and In Praise of Quiet Waters: Finding Solitude and Adventures in the Wild Adirondacks. She is a resident of Keene, NY, and is a sought-after speaker for groups.

Book readings and signings are planned for the Keene Valley Library (September 25, 7:30 p.m.), The Mountaineer (September 16, 4:30 p.m.), Au Sable Forks Free Library (October 13, 4 p.m.) and Wells Memorial Library (November 4, 11:30 a.m.).