‘Fruitcake’ has a real flavor of Maine Christmas catalyst for childhood tales

David Valdes Greenwood’s account of his years growing up in central Maine is chronicled in his book “A Little Fruitcake: A Childhood in Holidays.” It’s easy to underestimate this book because the title implies that it is seasonal, but this is a book for all seasons. It is a well-written and delightful collection of stories about Greenwood’s childhood in Norridgewock during the 1970s and ’80s.

Greenwood was born the son of a Cuban refugee living in Miami and a Maine woman from Norridgewock. When the relationship ended in the early 1970s, mother and sons, Ignacio and David, came home to Norridgewock to live with the Greenwood grandparents in an old farmhouse across the road from the Seventh-day Adventist church where they worshipped.

Grammy, a central character in Greenwood’s stories, emerges as a woman of mythic proportions, a type that native-born Mainers will recognize instantly. She is the eternal matriarch, the ruler of the household, the one around whom all life revolves because she is a giver and keeper of life – nourishing, chastising, bullying and, in her own tacit way, loving.

Each of the 12 stories has as its background Christmas. But the stories are about a great deal more than that. They are about place, about family and about the complexity of human interactions and relationships that infuse a child with identity and a perception of self.

In “The Powder Keg Under the Tree” we encounter the dilemma the family faced when a 4-year-old David asks for a baby doll for Christmas.

In “The War of the Fudges” we recognize Grammy’s cans of mouthwatering fudge and candy confections that she made for each member of her family at Christmastime.

And we go along with young David as he shops for gifts for his family at LaVerdiere’s Super Drug Store in Skowhegan in “The Shoestring Santa Blues,” an expedition calculated to make Grammy think twice about giving David and his brother white cotton tube socks for Christmas.

Greenwood’s stories are laced with humor and show a keen sense of insight and empathy that grab the reader’s interest and keep it. His is a writer’s voice largely missing from most of what is written about Maine – the voice of working-class people. The details in Greenwood’s stories ring true to the times he writes about and authentic to a Maine way of life that many of us remember, or indeed, still live.

In the story “Geronimo, Nixon, Custer and Me” he observes that Maine children of his generation spent a great deal of play time jumping into and off things – lakes, rivers, ponds, piles of leaves, snowdrifts and the roofs of houses. His was an era when parents did not hover. In the story, he and a friend jump off the tin roof of the house next door and into the snowdrift below, with unexpected consequences.

In the story “Country of the Wicked Pointy Firs” Greenwood writes about walking into nearby woods with his buddy Scotty, armed only with a hacksaw, to cut a Christmas tree, an errand that involves cutting off only the top few feet of a very tall fir.

Greenwood’s stories reflect a childhood that was lived both within and on the edges of the community. He attended church schools, not public schools. He defines himself as a “girly-boy,” bright and artistic, who never quite fit into the milieu of his life within the town. He has taken that experience and written about it with love, humor, humility, verve and charm. Those who enjoy reading stories about Maine should not miss this book. It’s a keeper.