“I love the winter landscapes, Oh how wonderfully beautiful it was in Brattleboro. I used to walk to the head of High Street, and stand and look at the mountain in winter. The beauty in Brattleboro made a great difference in my life.”

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 1852-1930 (Letter 509 to Allie Morse. The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Edited with Biographical/Critical Introductions and Annotations by Brent L. Kendrick. Scarecrow, 1985.)

I don’t know about you, but when I hear “Made in Vermont,” many things come to my mind.

The first thing that always defies gravity by flowing upwards to the top of my list is Maple Syrup. Vermont and maple syrup are synonymous in my mind. Imagine a stack of sourdough pancakes, topped with melting butter, all amber-glazed with hot maple syrup. (Well, I’ve got the starter, and I’ve got the maple syrup. I can feel breakfast coming on. Actually, once when I was in Vermont, my hosts insisted that we have pancakes and maple syrup for dinner, with dill pickle spears on the side. Scrumptious!) Maple syrup must taste good to lots and lots and lots of people: on average, Vermont produces 2.55 million gallons of maple syrup annually. Is that sweet or what?

The second thing on my Made-in-Vermont list–since I’m a baker–would have to be King Arthur Flour. Is there any other? Of course, other brands of flour exist. But when it comes to my own baking–biscuits, cakes, cobblers, muffins, pancakes, pie crust, puff pastry, and scones–I always use King Arthur Flour. (No. I am not being paid by advertising affiliates. Hmmm. That is a thought.) I even use it to start my sourdough starter and to replenish it. Located in Norwich, Vermont, King Arthur Flour produces 100 million pounds annually. Can you imagine?

Cheese, of course, is on my list, too. Vermont produces 147 million pounds of cheese annually. Its artisanal cheeses are some of the best in the world. I’m thinking of Cabot’s Clothbound Cheddar, Jasper Hill’s Bayley Hazen Blue, Lazy Lady Farm Goat Cheese, and Vermont Creamery’s Bonnie Bouche. Those are some of my favorites. They seem to be everyone’s favorites when served alongside some fresh fruit and a warm loaf of my fresh sourdough bread made, of course, with King Arthur Flour.

And since I have a sweet tooth, you won’t be surprised to know that Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream (out of Burlington, Vermont) makes my list and lots of others’, too, confirmed by 282 million pints churned annually. Best-selling? Half Baked, followed by Cherry Garcia. I’ll take a triple-scoop, waffle cone of each, one for each hand. Yum! Thank you for the extra napkins. I’ll need them.

To that list, a new Made-in-Vermont item can be added as of May 23. Surprisingly, it’s not food related. On further thought, however, it really is food related. It’s food for the soul. That’s the best kind. It’s a book of short stories, many of them as timeless and as universal as you can ever hope to find, in Vermont or anywhere else in the world.

My regular followers know, of course, that I am referring to my recently published edition of Green Mountain Stories, a collection of 28 stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Originally published in 1887 under the title A Humble Romance and Other Stories, it’s now in print–136 years later–under what appears to have been the title that Freeman and her editor, Mary Louise Booth, had agreed upon: Green Mountain Stories. You can read all about the book’s backstory in the “Introduction” and the “Critical Commentary” that I wrote for the publication.

I won’t go into the details here. If I do, you will have no incentive to buy Green Mountain Stories. And if you don’t buy the book, how will I–a former community college professor–be able to afford reinventing myself, a process that I started in January 2023. I can’t stop now, sung to the tune of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “I Won’t Back Down.” Lord only knows what might become of me if I did. I must finish whatever it is that I have started in this new chapter of my life. Trust me: I’ll stand my ground, won’t be turned around.

But let me get back to Green Mountain Stories. I was in Burlington, Vermont, for a launch on May 25, and then, on May 30, I was in Brattleboro, Vermont, for another launch. At both launches, I emphasized a few of Freeman’s major literary accomplishments:

■ In 1925, she was the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Gold Medal for Distinguished Work in Fiction. The award is given every five years. Some subsequent winners include Pearl Buck, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, John Updike, Don DeLillo, and, most recently, Richard Powers.

■ In 1926, she was one of the first women elected to membership in the American Institute of Arts and Letters. It “marked the letting down of the bars to women.”

■ In 1938, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters dedicated its bronze doors to “The Memory of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and the Women Writers of America.”

At both launches, I also noted something truly extraordinary about the publication of Green Mountain Stories.

From the time that I came up with my plan for the book, I decided that the publisher of Green Mountain Stories would have to be a Vermont publisher. I would not settle for less.

Now, Vermonters can take great pride in knowing that Green Mountain Stories is Made in Vermont.

■ The book’s publisher—Onion River Press–is in Burlington, Vermont.

■ The book’s designer—Jenny Lyons— lives in Vermont.

■ The book’s launches took place in Vermont, initially in Burlington–sponsored by Onion River Press and Vermont bookseller Phoenix Books–and then in Brattleboro–sponsored by three Vermont organizations: Brattleboro Literary Festival, Brooks Memorial Library, and the Words Trail.

■ And, most important of all, the author of Green Mountain Stories–Mary E. Wilkins Freeman– launched her acclaimed literary career in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Green Mountain Stories is Made in Vermont.

■ I hope that Green Mountain Stories brings great inspiration to readers across Vermont.

■ I hope that each of the 262,852 households in Vermont buys a copy.

■ I hope that each of the 185 public libraries in Vermont buys at least one copy.

■ And I hope that each of the 250 public schools in Vermont figures out a way to incorporate at least one Mary E. Wilkins Freeman short story into their curriculum. They will find many suitable ones in Green Mountain Stories–stories on par with the best in American Literature, right up there with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Faulkner.

Those are my hopes. I know. They are high hopes. I do not hold those hopes with the expectation of selling lots of copies of Green Mountain Stories, though bringing home a little green wouldn’t be a bad thing. Instead, I hope that Vermont and Vermonters will welcome home with welcome arms its most famous literary daughter, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Made in Vermont.