Dave Patterson, affectionately known as Mr. Patterson to his GHS English and Creative Writing students, published his new book entitled “Euphoria” in early July. The book is a collection of ten short stories that take place in Euphoria, a fictional Maine town.

These connected stories paint the picture of a “struggling mill town far from the ocean with its bright tourism glow and Vacationland aura. The characters sticking it out in Euphoria live in a setting that offers both solace and brutal indifference,” Patterson describes.

All of these simultaneous perspectives and lives occur over the course of one dreary winter; the stories in “Euphoria” range from escaped zoo animals, to honest and tragic depictions of struggles with addiction, to old friends, to domestic unrest. Despite not being from Maine originally, Patterson believes that Euphoria’s “rural grit, sagging mill, and indifference to its characters is an amalgamation of [his] scrappy childhood in northern Vermont near the Canadian border and [his] twenty-plus years of living in Maine and working in rural high schools in the state.”

He is passionate about telling the stories of rural New England towns that have fallen from thriving communities to struggling to stay afloat, as he came from these towns and grew up among people with similar experiences. “It’s my greatest literary ambition to make high art out of lower-middle-class lives,” says Patterson.
He draws inspiration from Richard Russo, a Pulitzer Prize winning author who is in conversation with Patterson for his book launch at Print: A Bookstore in Portland, on Tuesday, Aug. 12. The publication of the realistic and vivid stories that make up “Euphoria” has advanced Patterson’s journey as an author, and GHS and its students are simultaneously proud and fortunate to call him a teacher and friend.