Letting Swift River Go (Turtleback School & Library)

In the middle of this century, the Swift River towns in western Massachusetts were drowned - purchased by the government and flooded in order to form the Quabbin Reservoir. "Letting Swift River Go" tells of this dramatic event through the eyes of a young girl, Sally Jane, as she watches her thriving hometown transformed into a wilderness and then submerged. Sally Jane's story vividly recalls life and changing times in rural America: playing by the Old Stone Mill and later watching it be torn down; harvesting maple sap and seeing those same trees uprooted; walking to school along a winding balcktop road and returning many years later to float above the same road in a rowboat on the new reservoir.