"With Voices of Dogtown, James R. Scrimgeour has written an imaginative insider’s guide to New England’s most enigmatic setting. Dogtown’s distinctive terrain provides the backstitching to a tapestry that Scrimgeour has woven through with the voices of the area's ‘doomed souls’ and the many scholars and artists the land has inspired. The result is a deeply researched and thoroughly imagined collection celebrating Dogtown’s unique character and its unshakeable effect upon those who venture to know this mysterious place."

— Elyssa East, author of Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town

"Dogtown was and is uniquely New England. Scrimgeour leads us there down a two-lane road—one lane paved with historical research and the other lane paved with the embodied experience of being in a place, seeing its shadows, hearing its ghosts. The walk is a bit out of the way and perhaps a bit overgrown, and there’s a good chance of collecting what Scrimgeour calls “the Dogtown bug,” but it’s just that bug--the voices we bring back with us—that we remember long after the end of the trip."

— Brian Clements, co-editor of Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence

"The voices in these poems . . . bring Dogtown alive in a multi- dimensional way that comes as close, in my judgement, as anyone has come so far to capturing the complete essence of Dogtown. When I finish reading these poems, when I have heard all the voices they contain, I think of Dogtown as if it is a sentient, breathing organism, and I marvel at my appreciation and understanding not only of the experience of Dogtown in particular, but also of the experience of place in general."

— Carl Carlsen, author of Brickyard Stories: a Lynn Neighborhood and Its Traditions