Carding, Vermont (population 3,700) is nestled somewhere in the Green Mountains. Everyone knows that.
But as Gideon Brown explains in the short story Needing a Map in a GPS World, the town never appears on any maps of the state.
Strange, eh?
And yet readers can tell you what Carding looks like from the jumbled nature of Coopers General Store to the fair held on the green every summer to the beckoning aroma of the cinnamon rolls that Diana Bennett bakes in the Crow Town Bakery.
Carding was inspired by a combination of the places author Sonja Hakala loved as a girl growing up in Holden, Massachusetts, her time on Cape Cod, and the many years she’s spent living in her beloved Vermont.
Here are some of the people and places who have inspired her town and the characters who live there.
