The Truth Behind Tommy's Island and Catnip Bill
by Leland Parsons
Release Date: 8/28/26
In this quintessentially American tale, Parsons details the adventures he and his young school-age friends embarked upon among the marshes and clam flats around Gloucester, Massachusetts. The object of these adventures was inevitably to test themselves against the elements in order to understand their place in the world.
Catnip Bill, a mysterious, old hermit who lived alone on an island surrounded by marsh grass, was the greatest test of all. To Parsons and his young companions, he was a source of both fear and fascination. A phantom who lived in a reclusive manner that made no sense, who seemed to belong nowhere at all. They hid from him and followed him as he came and went from his island home - terrified of what he might do if he ever caught them.
Within his tale, Parsons returns, as an adult, to the place of his youth. Catnip is long gone, but Parsons has never forgotten him. And through one of the most harrowing descriptions of a shipwreck you are ever likely to read, he endows his old nemesis with a heartbreaking backstory and a place among his neighbors.
"Parsons brings his Huck Finn world to life on the page in vivid detail through the eyes of the kid he once was, running in the woods, rowing the waters, skinny-dipping in the summer, freezing in the winter out on the clam flats with the tide coming in — always on the lookout for Catnip Bill appearing in the distance like a ghost from another world." -Cape Ann Magazine
by Leland Parsons
Release Date: 8/28/26
In this quintessentially American tale, Parsons details the adventures he and his young school-age friends embarked upon among the marshes and clam flats around Gloucester, Massachusetts. The object of these adventures was inevitably to test themselves against the elements in order to understand their place in the world.
Catnip Bill, a mysterious, old hermit who lived alone on an island surrounded by marsh grass, was the greatest test of all. To Parsons and his young companions, he was a source of both fear and fascination. A phantom who lived in a reclusive manner that made no sense, who seemed to belong nowhere at all. They hid from him and followed him as he came and went from his island home - terrified of what he might do if he ever caught them.
Within his tale, Parsons returns, as an adult, to the place of his youth. Catnip is long gone, but Parsons has never forgotten him. And through one of the most harrowing descriptions of a shipwreck you are ever likely to read, he endows his old nemesis with a heartbreaking backstory and a place among his neighbors.
"Parsons brings his Huck Finn world to life on the page in vivid detail through the eyes of the kid he once was, running in the woods, rowing the waters, skinny-dipping in the summer, freezing in the winter out on the clam flats with the tide coming in — always on the lookout for Catnip Bill appearing in the distance like a ghost from another world." -Cape Ann Magazine