Two Down East Books have won IPPY awards from the Indpendent Publisher Book Awards.  Becoming Teddy Roosevelt: How a Maine Guide Inspired America’s 26th President by Andrew Vietze,  won a Silver Award in the “Best Regional Non-Fiction” category, and Chosen Faith, Chosen Land: The Untold Story of America’s 21st-Century Shakers, by Jeannine Lauber, has won a Bronze Award in the “Religion” category.

Chosen Faith, Chosen Land explores the world’s only remaining Shaker community. Weaving together proprietary Shaker quotations, interviews, and photographs, the book exposes a multitude of popular misconceptions and myths, most notably that the Shakers and their faith are dead. The contemporary Shaker community has become surprisingly outward-reaching and in this book the author strives to place the topics of faith, community, work, and worship in the  context of Shaker history and contemporary developments on the American landscape.

Author Jeannine Lauber is a nationally recognized, multiple Emmy-Award winning broadcast journalist who has spent more than two decades covering the news.  She lives in Casco, Maine.

Becoming Teddy Roosevelt tells the story of how Theodore Roosevelt went into the Maine woods with legendary Maine Guide Bill Sewall, as a sickly, asthmatic city boy, and emerged several trips later as a robust, confident outdoorsman—the kind of man who could be president. This book describes the lifelong friendship between the twenty-sixth president and the lumberman from Island Falls, and explores how that bond changed Roosevelt (and the nation)... and why it matters today.

Andrew Vietze is a freelance writer based in Appleton, Maine. The former managing editor of Down East magazine, he’s written for a wide array of publications.  He’s currently finishing a thriller set in the North Woods during the lumbering era.

The views expressed on this Web site are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Down East Enterprise or its employees.