The cover of “Sutton Tales,” written by Falmouth resident Larry Dyhrberg and published this year. Contributed / Larry Dyhrberg

Falmouth resident Larry Dyhrberg’s new novel is not about Westbrook, Maine. Not specifically, at least.

“Well, it is a novel set in a mill town in Maine, which, if you grew up as I did in Westbrook, you would think looked quite a bit like Westbrook,” said Dyhrberg.

“Sutton Tales” follows two main characters in the fictional mill town of Sutton from the 1920s through 1960s, exploring life in a small Maine community and the larger politics and history of influence. It was published this year with Maine Authors Publishing.

The first storyline is that of Hélène Honoré Levesque, a Franco-American girl growing up in Sutton in the 1920s and through the Great Depression. Over the years, she experiences the impacts of economic hardships and labor unions on the mill and its community and faces the challenges of Quebecois integrating into Anglo-American society.

The second thread of the novel follows a young Gilbert Jenkins in grade school in the 1950s. As Sutton grapples with communism and the Red Scare, the fear of atom bombs and new ideas of race relations, Gilbert encounters a mill town and America already so different from Hélène’s childhood. At the end of the novel in 1961, the two characters cross paths.

“It’s told from a kid’s point of view. But it’s also dealing with the deep national and international issues that were going on at the same time,” said Dyhrberg.

Dyhrberg grew up in Westbrook and returned to teach history at Westbrook High School for 33 years. His father was one of six children who grew up in Falmouth and practiced medicine in Westbrook, where Dyhrberg was raised with three brothers. Both his own experiences in the town and stories from his family growing up in Southern Maine towns influenced “Sutton Tales.”

“Westbrook as a community, and a changing community, certainly informed the way I look at myself and the way I look at the world around me,” said Dyhrberg.

However, Dyhrberg makes clear that the novel is not specifically about Westbrook, but more generally the small mill town experience in Maine during this time period.

“Westbrook was terribly important to the story, and yet it’s not a book about Westbrook,” he said.

Author Larry Dyhrberg grew up in Westbrook, which inspired the novel. Contributed / Larry Dyhrberg

Both in his novel and his high school teaching, Dyhrberg always tried to connect national and international historical events with local experiences at the time.

“I always tried very hard to draw the connections between the themes we were talking about and the experiences that the kids would have been having in Westbrook, and still have in Westbrook,” he said.

Following his retirement from teaching, Dyhrberg joined the University of Southern Maine’s fiction workshop through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The group of 12 meets once a month to develop their writing together through critique and encouragement. Having attended the workshop for eight years, Dyhrberg not only wrote most of his book with the group but is now also a co-facilitator.

It took him a few years of experimenting with fiction writing to find the story of Gilbert, and later the perspective of Hélène. In addition to his group at USM, Dyhrberg also credits his wife, Michelle Fournier, for not only her support but help in his writing. A French teacher at Falmouth Middle School, Fournier helped with the French that Hélène and her family speak in the book.

“She’s just been very, very supportive of the writing and the process,” he said.

Dyhrberg is considering continuing the story of Gilbert, or going in a new direction in his future works. He wrote a play based on the story of Peter Pan set in a city in the 1960s and may convert it into a novel, he said. Regardless, he plans to continue in the artform, combining his longtime expertise in history and new knack for fiction.

“As long as my fingers will keep moving on the keyboard, I’ll keep doing it,” he said.