Garden of memories: A guide to historic forest Hills

Garden of memories: A guide to historic forest Hills by Susan Wilson. Mass Market Paperback edition. ISBN: 9781892387004.

Founded in 1848, Boston’s Forest Hills is one of the most beautiful cemeteries I’ve ever visited. I owe that visit to stumbling across this dense little book in a travel store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The book may be difficult to find elsewhere, but it’s very worth tracking down. Garden of Memories opens with a historical overview that places Forest Hills in perspective. From then on, it leads you through six walking tours that range in topic from art to history to literature to world events. Forest Hills is the final resting place of E. E. Cummings, Anne Sexton, Eugene O’Neill, Revolutionary War generals, suffragette doctors, as well as the Red Scare martyrs Sacco and Vanzetti. It’s also home to some of the most amazing mortuary sculpture I’ve yet seen, including not only David Chester French’s Death and the Sculptor and his Angel of Peace, but also Thomas Ridgeway Gould’s Ascending Spirit, and other poignant portrait sculpture whose creators are less well-known. The book includes a torrent of biographical sketches and a good number of truly striking photographs. If you can’t get to Boston, this might be the next best thing.