Portland write Monica Wood is no stranger to the literary world, with several acclaimed books to her credit. But her new memoir, “When We Were the Kennedys,” may well boost her name to the ranks of Maine’s leading authors.

What begins as the tale of one family’s loss grows into the story of a town and the industry that defined it; a time, a place, even a nation.

This charming and accomplished book starts small, in the village of Mexico, Maine, and never loses sight of its church-going, provincial ways. Families live in triple-deckers, neighbors are close-knit and nearly everyone works at “The Oxford,” the local paper mill.

One morning in April 1963, Albert Wood, 57, a foreman at The Oxford, leaves the house for work. Opening his garage door, he has a heart attack and dies. The book unfolds from that event, that single transformative day in the lives of the author and her large Irish Catholic family.

If there’s a sure-fire way to illuminate the story that follows, it’s to appoint a child narrator. Nine-year-old Monica Wood — Monnie, as the author is known — is our lively and resourceful guide on the journey ahead, with its jolts and consolations.

At first, Monnie counts the hours since her father died, as if the pain could be quantified. It’s a child’s way of measuring, and a device that would be seen as histrionic if used by an adult. Nor could an adult plausibly question so many of the ordinary details that surround death — the social hierarchy of visitors, conventions of mourning, even the language that applies.

“I’m the girl whose father died — dropped, people said, as if describing an apple falling from a tree; Dad, our shiny apple, dropped, and now I’m one of three fatherless children in the entire school,” Wood writes.

Monnie takes comfort in books and friendships and their improbable spin-offs. Her best friend, Denise, provides the added benefit of a dad who’s in the “prevention business.” Thus, Denise’s house seems like a disaster-free zone.

Another friend of a different sort is Nancy Drew, of the famed mystery series. Monnie doesn’t merely devour these books; she starts to write her own version.

“I’ve written two pages, full of beginning — searching, I suppose (in my book, in every book) for a family with no missing pieces, the family we used to be,” she says.

Underlying Monnie’s grief is the fear that something awful will happen to her mother — that is, something beyond the earthquake that has already shaken the family.

“Mum moves through the kitchen in her new way, slowly, as if the floor itself might give way,” she says. “She’s stranded, afraid, unschooled in the work of being a widow. Whom do you look to? How is this done?”

Months later, a tragic answer surfaces. As the family plans a Thanksgiving road trip to the nation’s capital, the nation is about to be stunned. The death of President John F. Kennedy would come to mirror the Wood family’s loss.

At first glance, readers may find the Kennedy metaphor a bit of a stretch. Yet the basic contours fit: The Irish Catholic family, the young kids, the father’s sudden death. Besides, this is a memoir, after all, not fiction, and young Monnie is as surprised as anyone to find her humble mill family somehow aligned with that of the president. And Monnie’s Mum, totally fixated on the grieving poise of Jackie Kennedy, is visibly changed by the bond of widowhood they now share.

In fact, the first lady’s public mourning gives meaning and structure to a small-town widow’s tightly held grief.

“She never directly compared herself to Jackie,” Wood writes. “For now, Jackie’s story made Mum’s bearable … but I believe she took a private comfort in the way Jackie had made grief look beautiful.”

“When We Were the Kennedys” is a marvel of storytelling, layered and rich. It is, by turns, a chronicle of the renowned paper mill that was both pride and poison to several generations of a town; a tribute to the ethnic stew of immigrant families that grew and prospered there; and an account of one family’s grief, love and resilience.

Along the way, we meet a large and colorful cast of characters, many of them vividly drawn.

This is an inspiring, feel-good book that, in lesser hands, could have been pure cornball. Instead, Wood has taken difficult material and given it a smart, funny spin. The result is irresistible.

Joan Silverman of Kennebunk is a freelance writer.

 

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