Trading in Scrabbletown

A curious barrel of forgotten papers, unearthed in a New England attic, becomes the gateway to a bustling early‑19th‑century hamlet called Scrabbletown. Through ledger entries, lottery tickets, and heartfelt letters, the narrator pieces together the daily risks and rewards of the town’s traders, whose lives were marked by daring deals, sudden debts, and a community that read and wrote with surprising skill.

At the heart of the collection is Israel Brayton, a modest merchant whose careful record‑keeping offers a rare glimpse into the social web of the era—from his ship‑captain brother’s coastal voyages to the quiet lives of his sisters and freed‑slave neighbor Prince Potter. The book reads like a living archive, inviting listeners to hear the murmurs of a vanished world while preserving the human stories that linger in ink and paper.